End of the Beginning
by The S
Summary: An unforeseen moment of passion takes D by surprise, revealing that his would-be nemesis possesses the soul of a former lover. (Shounen-ai)


Disclaimer: Petshop of Horrors belongs to the incredibly talented and fabulous Matsuri Akino-sensei, the publishers Ozora Shupan, and Studio Madhouse. Only the Japanese characters in this story are my own. 

Author's Note: Familiarity with the manga or anime series Petshop of Horrors is not necessary to understand or enjoy this story. A glossary of foreign terms used and a list and acknowledgement of poetry quoted follows the story.

Warning: For those of you who do not know what shounen-ai is, the following story contains m/m pairings. If you have a problem with this, sod off.

END OF THE BEGINNING 

By Asia the Invincible

D noticed that Leon was particularly distracted, when the detective sat down on the sofa, right next to him, a heretofore unthinkable act for the American. His brooding silence held a different quality than usual, today. Perhaps it was fortunate that they were alone in the quiet parlour for the first time in weeks. Even Q-chan was missing from this afternoon's tea, the girl having taken him along, when she'd left for the park with the children, just before the detective had arrived. 

D sipped his tea in silence, giving Leon time to come out with what was bothering him on his own. He always did, eventually. D observed the policeman discreetly, from beneath hooded eyelids and long eyelashes. The detective's Cro-Magnon brow was furrowed with thought in the most charming way, and the corners of his expressive mouth twitched downward in a childlike pout, as he mulled over some particularly unpleasant thought. 

{Damnit}, Leon cursed to himself. {Why does he always have to be so…calm?} Leon was anything but. Watching D just sitting there quietly made Leon even more angry. D. When had Leon gone from referring to the count in his own mind as "the dragonlady" and "that smug Chink bastard" to, simply, "D"? He'd even slipped and done it out loud a couple times. God, had Jill made him regret THAT mistake. 

"Oh, it's just "D" now?"

"Shut up, Jill. I'm tired. I've been up for 72 hours on stake out." 

"But you're STILL going to drop by "D"'s for breakfast on your way home, aren't you?" 

Leon had ground his teeth, audibly. Because that was exactly what he'd been planning to do. But not for the reasons Jill was implying. "You know, you could cut out all the travel time and just sleep over now and then. I'm sure "D" wouldn't mind." 

Leon had lost it. The last thing he needed was for Jill to joke a little too loud one day and have the guys wondering if he was a fag. He had gone at her almost full-force, and Jill had proven reason number 3 why she was his best friend: she could kick his ass, if she had to. Lucky for Leon, Jill had used her second degree black belt that day just to block and defuse him. She could have messed him up. And he would have deserved it. It wasn't Jill's fault Leon's head had been so screwed up lately. It was D's. That guy was under his skin with a vengeance. 

"I think it's just so romantic…" Jill had said to him, out of nowhere, at lunch this afternoon. 

Leon had rolled his eyes and asked, around a mouthful of burger, "What now?" 

Jill had smiled dreamily and taken a sip of ice water. "The way the count still loved Wong after everything that happened. After he tried to kill him." She had sighed. 

Leon had felt ill. "What the hell's so romantic about that? It's just stupidity, if you ask me." 

"He went to visit him on Death Row, right before Wong killed himself; did you know that?" Leon merely grunted in response. He had known it, and something deep inside him didn't appreciate being reminded of the fact. "I ran into Candace at my fitness center the other day and she said Larry told her how the count cried and whispered desperately to Wong, right up until they'd told him time was up. He was speaking Chinese, so Larry didn't know what he said, but I bet it was the stuff of sonnets." Jill had looked like she was getting teary-eyed. "I hope I can find someone who loves me that much some day." 

Leon had thrown the rest of his lunch away in disgust. "Stop it, Jill. You're gonna make me throw up." Her words had haunted him all day. He'd even left the station early, his stomach had felt so bad. 

But what business was it of Leon's how D ran his life? He should be able to date serial killers until the cows came home, and Leon not bat an eye. Why should he care? So what if the little bastard got himself killed? It'd make one more prime suspect Leon wouldn't have to watch like a hawk anymore, waiting for that one moment when he made the tiny mistake that would finally incriminate him. 

Leon clenched and unclenched his fists and looked at D once more. The count was staring at him with that smoky gaze. {Damnit.} Leon looked away. {Motherfuck!} But no string of mental swearing could stop Leon from wondering, {Who the hell IS he? What is he really thinking? That cold, polite exterior--that's not him. I've SEEN him. And that's not it.} 

Leon couldn't get the D of that primordial forest out of his mind. Logically, Leon understood that it had just been a dream. But it hadn't FELT like one. Somehow, he knew that childlike, laughing D was under the count's polite, smile-mask somewhere. Along with the hysterical D who he'd had to slap to calm down, and the angry D who'd ripped the cigarette out of his mouth and told him how and why he hated all Americans. And the D who'd freaked out and bandaged him up so carefully, when Leon had torn up his arm, falling out of that tree. It couldn't ALL have been a dream. 

What about that terrified look on D's face, when Leon had burst in on that weird European guy practically assaulting D on the couch? That hadn't been a dream… 

Well, who cared if D never showed his true face around Leon? Who cared who D fell in love with? Who cared if D got caught in the crossfire of a drive-by tomorrow? Who cared? {Not me}, Leon told himself firmly. {Oh no.} 

D was used to his pet's explosive temper, so he was not caught off-guard, when Leon suddenly turned on him. "You like to be abused, don't you?" he accused. "I should have known you were that type a long time ago: one of those masochistic pretty-boys who isn't happy in a relationship unless his lover beats him or threatens his life regularly. I forget the psychobabble word for it—-you think you deserve to be punished for being born with the wrong set of parts." 

D was taken aback by the suggestion. What had motivated this new outburst, he wondered. "I don't understand…" he trailed off, searching Leon's angrily-flushed face for some clue. His companion leaned forward until they were nose to nose. D could see the detective's pulse beating in a vein which stood out at his left temple. 

"You can't play that `I don't know what you're talking about' game with me on this one, Count. You couldn't even break up with your last crazy boyfriend, Baron von Meisterbrau--or whatever his name was- -yourself. You had to drag ME into it, before he finally gave up and left you alone!" 

D turned his face away, partly to avoid Leon's bad breath, which stank of bacon double cheeseburgers with extra onions, and partly to hide a smirk. He'd been wondering when Leon was going to bring up that little episode again. He knew the detective could not have forgotten the physical liberties D had taken with him, in the midst of an awkward situation, or the feeling he'd gotten with their bodies pressed together for that length of time. And that was just as D had intended. 

Leon was not deterred by D's semi-retreat. He leaned forward even further, forcing D into a position where he was almost reclining on the sofa, his expression surprised and a little frightened, and he had to look up at Leon, as the policeman continued. "Or how about the one before that? Meet Chef Wong, Chinatown's very own real-life Hannibal Lecter. It wasn't enough you fell in love with his cooking, you had go and try to become one of his ingredients!" Leon sat back a moment, trembling with fury, leaving D to slump back against the arm of the sofa in dismay. "Call me crazy, Buddy, but the `I love you so much, I have to kill you' method of dating doesn't do anything for me." He turned to D once again, jabbing an angry finger into his silk- covered chest. "But you get off on that sort of stuff, don't you?" An almost hysterical laughter burst out of him. "Even after he almost hacked you into sweet & sour pork, you still had a thing for him!" 

D couldn't resist correcting him. "No, Mr. Detective, I was not going to be eaten as a main dish. I was to be dessert." Naturally, this only served to further inflame Leon. 

"Oh! Well, excuse me! I didn't realise you still had such fond memories of the situation! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You're—-you're beyond sick! I think you're the one they should've locked up…" 

D's eyes softened, and he tuned-out Leon's voice, as his tirade continued. Perhaps someday when he was very, very old and had no more use for his red-blooded American pride, Leon would be able to admit to himself that he was jealous. D was pleased to note that this angry outburst, like several of his tantrums of late, came out of concern for the count's safety. D had played the role of victim for Leon only twice, and it seemed the "brilliant" detective was already thoroughly convinced that he could not take care of himself. At this rate, it would not be long before Leon would believe that he was incapable of committing a crime, as well, and give up his silly investigations of the shop. D could not help a tiny, self-satisfied smile. 

Leon stopped in mid-rant, and his face turned blue with rage. "You're not even LISTENING to me, ARE you?!" 

"Of course I am, Mr. Detective," D replied serenely. "You always have my full attention." 

"Do I really?" he threatened. Leon gripped D's shoulders and pressed him down into the sofa. "I don't believe you for a minute! In fact, I'm starting to think that maybe life-threatening violence is the only way to get your attention." He made as if to grab D by the throat, but, when his fingers actually made contact with D's neck, his hesitant touch belied his murderous tone of voice. 

D stared calmly back at Leon, as always, completely unfazed by the policeman's fit of temper. As the count gazed deeply into Leon's eyes and soul (an act which would have unnerved an ordinary human being ), he noticed something had changed in the American. It looked as though part of the dam that held back Leon's real feelings from the world and from himself had broken loose. A torrential flood of emotions threatened to burst free at any moment. It was not quite the change D had been nurturing or hoping for. His eyes opened wide with trepidation, as he saw Leon's steel exterior begin to buckle under the immense pressure. D doubted seriously that Leon's psyche could handle the natural disaster which threatened him from the inside. He wanted to do something to help his favourite pet, but he wasn't sure there was anything he could do. 

Leon's gentle grip on D's throat went limp, and his head slumped down onto the armrest beside D in emotional exhaustion. "I can't yell at you anymore," Leon groaned. 

"Oh?" D could not decide how he felt exactly about the fact that Leon was all but lying on top of him now. 

The detective lifted his head back up to make eye-contact with the count. His lovely blue eyes were filled with the deep depression that had always lurked behind his bad temper. The secret self-hatred that engendered it came from Leon's refusal to accept an innate part of himself at any cost, a self-hatred which had forced him into a career where his life was regularly put in danger. And it was this same self-hatred which manifested itself most frequently in the form of Leon's explosive temper. In this way, Leon was able to keep even his most tolerant and sympathetic friends at arm's length, and to drive everyone else away. It ensured that no one would ever get close enough to Leon to see the truth. 

"I can only threaten you for so long before I have to admit that you aren't going to take me seriously." D was amazed at the candor in Leon's voice. His naked honesty was heart-wrenching. The count's paternal instinct was moved to comfort him. But how could he tell Leon that his efforts were not meaningless, that the detective's actions were actually disturbingly dear to him? 

"There's only one other way I can think of to get you to listen to me." D was rapt in his own emotional dilemma, heedless, as his companion lost his inner struggle. Leon watched in horrified fascination, as his fingers drifted toward the top clasp of the familiar Mandarin collar. 

D returned from his musings with a start, as Leon opened frog after frog down his robe, stopping just below his breastbone. All of his nerve endings tingled in shock, as he watched Leon sit back and pull off his own shirt. In his surprise, D forgot to don his mask of human civility or Chinese propriety and swept a gaze that was far from vegetarian over Leon's bare flesh. His mouth watered at the sight of the young, muscular chest and well-defined six-pack of abdominal muscles. D's fingertips twitched with the need to touch the bare skin, and his curiosity as to what would happen next just barely held him back from doing so. 

The heady, animal scent of Leon's sweat penetrated to the roof of D's mouth, making him dizzy. He pressed his lips together tightly, suppressing an urge to bite him, as Leon lay back down on top of him. The foolish young human, unaware of his danger, leaned in close and breathed into the ear of his imagined captive, "Do I have your attention now?" 

Leon slipped one hand inside D's cheongpao, and long nails slashed into the couch, as D struggled to regain his composure and emotional distance. "Is this how you question all of your suspects, Mr. Orcot," he joked in an attempt to distract either himself or his assailant. It worked on neither of them. 

"Shut up," Leon ordered, much more gently than usual. D went rigid as the detective slowly and sensuously slid his palm down the count's chest, stopping to rest on his stomach. His callused fingers plucked impatiently at the thin under-robe D wore. "How many layers of clothes do you wear, for crying out loud?" he complained, sounding more like his old self. D smiled, the petulance in his companion's voice bringing back his control. 

Leon didn't want to think about what he was doing. {Why aren't you a woman?} he asked mentally for the umpteenth time. The Chinese man was so damn feminine. He was more like a woman than any transsexual or cross-dresser Leon had ever had the misfortune to deal with in the course of his career. Jesus, he looked and acted more like a real woman than most of the women Leon knew! 

It was so easy to forget that the count was a man. Leon had been automatically reacting to D as if he were a woman since last Christmas, when he had made the younger guy cry. He had felt so goddamn bad about it. He would've done anything to make the count stop crying. (Hell, he HAD done anything D had asked that night, from breaking and entering, to abandoning his car in the middle of a traffic jam!) From that time, part of Leon's brain had refused to accept that the count was not a woman. Every now and then, he would even catch himself looking at the count when the Chinese man's back was turned, noticing…shit!…things one guy shouldn't notice about another. But, in his defense, there were things about D that other guys, normal guys--real men—just didn't have. 

The long, alabaster throat upon which his eyes now fell was a case in point. Very few women in existence possessed such an ethereal, swan-like feature. {But Count D is no woman}, an inner voice reminded him. Leon couldn't think about it. His body certainly knew what it wanted, and, no matter how loud his brain yelled, he couldn't stop what he was doing. 

D felt Leon's hot breath on his neck. His heart leapt into his throat, as the detective's lips came into contact with the vulnerable flesh above his carotid artery. Leon snaked one arm around D's waist and reached his other hand up to cup his face, gently stroking the count's lily-white cheek with his thumb. The tenderness of the normally boorish man's touch was mesmerising. D knew he should get away for Leon's own good, extract himself by force, if necessary. He found, however, that he had no desire to leave the embrace in which he was locked. 

His captor was not helping. "Come on, admit it," Leon growled seductively, between kisses that descended the curve of the count's throat and shoulder. " This is what you've been wanting since the first time we laid eyes on one another." He paused for a moment, hovering over D's exposed skin. Leon's statement echoed back into his own head. The ring of truth was unmistakable. But the embarrassment and denial that followed this realisation were quickly drowned out by the force of Leon's desire. "God, I want you!" he moaned, sounding as if his need were causing him physical pain. Leon removed his hand from D's face to grab him roughly beneath the chin. Applying tongue and teeth with a ferocity Dracula could not have bested, he attacked the count's throat as if he, too, were obtaining some sort of nourishment from the act. 

D had always been tickled by the way Leon manhandled him. It thrilled him as the detective applied that same brutality in this context. D felt several capillaries rupture beneath Leon's pressure, and his eyes closed involuntarily, as he savoured the feeling. He could have drowned in the devastating force of emotions issuing forth from deep inside the American, like a tsunami. Leon slid his arm from about the smaller man's waist to unclasp several more of the closures on his robe. 

As entertaining as it would have been to simply allow himself to be swept away, D told himself he had to try one last time to halt this strange course of events. Leon was sure to regret this at some point, and the count had no intentions of losing him after his pet had already made so much progress in the brief course of their relationship. D's eyelids fluttered open, and he struggled half-heartedly against the strong body on top of him. Unfortunately, he had played the role of helpless femme for Leon for so long that he couldn't help himself now, and his words sounded more like a stage performance than a serious request. "No!" His voice was soft, betraying his reluctance to sever their physical intimacy. "Stop!" 

It should have come as no surprise that Leon, as always, replied as D's script dictated. "Shut up!" he barked, grabbing the count by the wrists and pinning his arms back, painfully, to the sofa cushions. There was a strange, inhuman light in the American's eyes, as they met D's own violet and gold. 

If he hadn't been lying down already, he might have swooned. Now THIS was the Leon he wanted to see. Too excited to protest any longer, he artistically intertwined his legs with the long, athletic legs of the detective. Hearing his prey's heartbeat quicken, D kicked off one slipper and indulgently caressed Leon's calf with the balls of his foot. The policeman's eyes rolled back into his head and he broke out in a sweat. D twisted his wrists free of the now-distracted grip and placed his hands on Leon's bare upper body. He massaged his way down the detective's back slowly, luxuriating in the feel of his burning hot skin, stretched taut over well-toned muscle after muscle. The count's hands inched lower and lower, until they rested, long, claw-nailed fingers spread wide, over the seat of Leon's jeans. He forced himself to wait one last suspense-enhancing moment. When he felt Leon catch his breath, he gripped the American's backside greedily, taking full advantage of the opportunity, now that it had finally presented itself. Leon responded reflexively, grabbing D under the knees and thrusting himself between the Chinese man's thighs. His accompanying moan put professional pornographers to shame. The count could not have asked for a better response. 

Leon's skin was flushed with excitement, but he was also blushing, as he focused his eyes and looked down at D once more. "There's got to be a better place for this than the couch at the front of the store, right?" he asked. Leon half-hoped D would say no. Part of him wanted to take the beautiful man right here, out in the open. If a regular or a neighbor were to wander in, they would see that D belonged to him now. Leon had been jealously attempting to monopolise the count's free time for almost a year now, without offering anything in return, including a reason why. This was it. There would be no more manic-depressive or serial killer boyfriends in D's life. 

Having Leon's groin so unexpectedly and enthusiastically pressed against his own had proven somewhat more than distracting, and D had trouble finding his voice to answer the detective's question. When he did, his reply emerged as a series of gasps, like the voice of a fish out of water. "There is… the bed…the bedroom…is…" 

Leon sat up on the edge of the sofa and favoured him with the most disarming, boyish smile. It made D's heart ache with its unmasked sweetness. The detective stood, sweeping the count up in his arms, as he did so. "The bedroom it is," he said, beaming. D had never seen Leon so happy. He wrapped his arms around the American's neck and smiled contentedly. 

Leon stepped behind a large, velvet curtain and began to make his way through the labyrinthine series of corridors that wound through the back of the shop. He quickly lost his bearings, and was glad D was there to give directions, for he could never have found the way on his own. Normally, he would have been dying of curiosity about what was behind all the closed doors they were passing, but, right now, his attention was centered on one thing and one thing only. Where they touched D, his arms were humming with an electric, crackling energy. He could feel it tingling all the way down to his bones. And the Chinese man was so light. Even more so than Leon had imagined. He held him gingerly, feeling as though he might crush the count, if he was not careful. 

No one had carried D in his arms for decades, and the heady feeling it gave him made him giggle. "What's so funny?" Leon asked, suspicious and a little hurt, as they descended one of many staircases that criss-crossed the back of the shop. 

"Kiss me," D ordered, yanking Leon's mouth down on top of his own. 

The taste of confection on his tongue was so predictable, Leon wanted to laugh. D began to stroke his bare chest, and he quickly lost himself in the count's lips. {But you're kissing a guy}, that voice in his head nagged. 

{To hell with you!} Leon told it. {If this is what it's like to kiss a guy, I may never kiss a girl again.} They did not come up for air for quite some time. When they finally parted, both were breathing hard. Leon's body was on fire. He took off at top speed, racing the rest of the way, leaping up stairs and sprinting down hallways, certain that he could not contain himself for much longer. 

At last, they reached the bedroom, and he laid D gently on the enormous curtained bed, before turning away, suddenly shy, to remove his jeans. Behind him, he heard the swish of silk as the count undressed. Leon regretted his sudden attack of modesty, for he had wanted to watch the smaller man's delicate figure reveal itself sensuous bit by bit, as he disrobed. D had such a flare for the dramatic, Leon was sure it would be a sight to behold. Finished, he turned back to face the bed and was pleased to find that the count had not yet removed his silk slacks. Leon drank in D's flawless, fair skin. His hairless, aesthetically unmuscular chest was that of one of Socrates' shining youths, and it tapered almost femininely down to his slim hips. 

D himself was taking in Leon's nudity with silent appreciation. From where his eyes rested and the look on his face, it wasn't hard to guess what he was thinking. "You—you do not wear underclothes," he finally stumbled out. Leon smiled, reveling in having made D the speechless, awkward one for once. 

"Briefs are too tight for me, and I don't get the point of boxers," he explained simply. His smile turned mischievous and he dove onto the bed. "Why? What kind do you wear?" They were suddenly embroiled in an impromptu wrestling match, Leon trying to grab hold of D's waistband and the count blocking and twisting just out of reach each time. They both collapsed in a fit of laughter, when, after one desperate grab that missed, Leon realised the hand he'd accidentally jammed down the back of D's pants was resting on bare skin. Embarrassed, Leon quickly removed his hand. 

They lay there for several moments, catching their breath, Leon blushing furiously, and D, on top now, smiling like a happy cat. Leon was starting to have second and third thoughts. He frowned, as he wiped the sweat from his forehead, realising how disgusting he must look and smell. "I'm sorry," he apologised. "I should really take a shower." He began to sit up, but D pushed him back down with surprising strength. 

"You are delicious just as you are," D purred, running his tongue up Leon's sternum and capturing his lips. Leon warmed instantly under his touch, the American's worries suddenly as far away as old age. An image from their fight last Christmas, of the count's deft, slightly pointed tongue licking Leon's blood off of his long fingernails, sprang into the detective's mind, and he shivered in anticipation. 

He was not disappointed. Leon felt high, as if he were simultaneously floating free from his body and feeling the intense stimulation of every last nerve ending, from the follicles of his hair all the way down to his toenails. He stretched out on the silk sheets and allowed D to manipulate his body as he pleased. He would have liked to participate, to touch as he was being touched, but there was a weird voodoo reflexology thing to what the count was doing, and he found himself unable even to twitch a finger of his own accord. Just as Leon had feared, after all the warming-up they'd done, it was over quickly, his climax explosive and spectacular. 

When he realised that he could move again, he quickly turned the tables on his partner. D wriggled with delight as Leon kissed him from head to toe, finding all of his ticklish spots, and there were many. Finally, Leon overcame his nervousness and trepidation and reached for the count's last layer of clothing. He peeled back the silk slowly, worshipping every newly revealed millimeter of skin with his mouth, as if he were exposing the sacred flesh of a rare, exotic fruit. When the last barrier between them was gone, Leon shed his virgin awkwardness and just did what came naturally. {It's not like I   
don't know how a guy's body works}, he told himself. 

D was amazed by the detective's willingness to follow direction and his great eagerness to please. In the midst of his libations, Leon paused to apologize for his inexperience and lack of skill. D knew the first to be a fact, but the second was clearly not true, as it   
took him a moment to get enough blood back to his brain to fully process what the detective had said. "I do not believe I was complaining," he sighed, none too pleased at the interruption. 

  
Though, now that the build-up had been halted, he found it difficult to take his eyes from Leon's open, shining face. With his self-deceit gone, it was as if the sun had just emerged from behind the clouds. D had always known something worthwhile existed behind the policeman's gruff exterior, but he was nonetheless surprised by the full force of it. Without his anger and disillusionment, Leon was…beautiful. Not in the way a butterfly was beautiful, but more in the way the echo of a choir against the aged stone of a medieval monastery was beautiful. 

The blond man reddened at D's statement, which was both a compliment and an admonishment. Before his partner could return to what he'd been doing, D stopped him with a gentle hand. Leon looked up at him, his eyes full of uncertainty and fear of rejection. Faced with the motional vulnerability of the formerly macho-posturing American, D's heart was overwhelmed with tenderness. "Ai ren," he cooed softly,   
caressing Leon's cheek with the back of his hand. 

The detective leaned into D's touch, which was suddenly more important to him than breathing. He crawled up the bed so that they were face to face and stretched his body out on top of the count's boyish figure. Leon wrapped himself around the smaller man, holding him with a gentle ferocity that spoke more than any words with which he could have responded. D pulled out the rubber band that held back Leon's uncontrollable mass of hair and tangled his fingers in the thick, blond locks.

Leon basked in the glow of their intimacy. He reveled in the smoky scent of incense which clung to D's hair, the sweet salty taste of his skin, and the feel of the lithe body beneath him. Having the Chinese man's soft, smooth skin pressed against his own set Leon aflame once more, and he squirmed in frustration at his own ignorance as to what came next.

D stroked Leon's back affectionately, enticingly, as he felt the detective's desperate sex drive return. He knew exactly the thoughts that were streaming through Leon's mind, and D's sadistic side drank in his companion's discomfort and dismay like a fine wine. He could have easily ended Leon's torment at any time with the slightest word or gesture, but his silence forced the American to struggle with his awkwardness.

"D…" The count liked how the name sounded coming from the detective's lips. "I… don't—I'm not—I want—" Leon looked desperately to him for help, not knowing how to ask for what he wanted. "You have to tell me what to do," he pleaded. 

His dark side placated for the moment, D once again became the dramatist. He looked away, tilting his head up toward the silk brocade bed curtains. One feminine, long-fingered hand slid up to rest in a helpless, palm-up position that recalled a damsel in   
distress. His eyelids drooped seductively, and suddenly he was Greta Garbo. 

But he was distracted from his performance by the intensity of Leon's desire, as the American's pheromones diffused the air, making it difficult to breathe. Leon's amazingly resilient bonfire of passion bore down on D as if it might crush him. The count wanted to   
abandon himself to it. He looked up into that shining face which seemed to him suddenly familiar, drawing on a memory of a time long passed, which he could not quite grasp. D's hungry gaze met with Leon's questioning one. "Come," he breathed, expertly moving their bodies into a relationship that left no room for confusion as to what he wanted. 

Leon responded eagerly, as if the powerhouse of his virility had been waiting his   
whole life for just this moment. D was not ready for Leon's size or the sheer force of his need, and his first thrust tore into him with blinding pain. The American knew nothing of lube, of gradual entry, of the need to carefully relax muscles, and how would he? His body was simply following its usual routine. But knowing this didn't take the edge off the pain. 

The count hissed and raked his nails down Leon's back in retaliation. This excited the American even more, and D's hiss was quickly followed by a whimper of pleasure, as Leon set a heart attack-inducing pace that swept him beyond the pain. A shower of sweat rained down on him, making their bodies delightfully slippery against one another. D couldn't believe how long Leon maintained his breakneck pace. If he hadn't been enjoying himself so much, he would have been relieved when his partner finally slowed down, surely almost finished. 

The untrained skill with which Leon maneuvered him was astounding, as he shifted positions slightly, taking the pressure off of D's thighs, and setting a different pace all together. This one was slower, and allowed Leon to play with D as he moved. Gooseflesh erupted all over the count's skin, as Leon's mouth worked its way across his chest. In order to reach it, he'd changed the angle of his body slightly, and D discovered a pressure point within himself that he had not known existed. He wailed and bucked involuntarily. Leon quickly digested his reaction, returning to the jackhammer pace with which he'd begun. 

D rocketed upward toward Nirvana at lightning speed. A disconnected part of his mind screamed for a halt. He remembered why he no longer engaged in this sort of activity with mortals, as he began to lose control of his shape. What would Leon do if D's body were to alter right now? 

Perhaps the more important question was, what would happen to Leon, if D were to become less human right now? Centuries of practice in self-denial, cultivating a more gentle nature, flashed before his eyes, as D's nails grew sharp with an instinctive desire to dig deep trenches in Leon's back. D restrained the urge as much as he could, merely slicing a few shallow scratches, which quickly welled with bright red nectar. 

He deeply regretted the mind game he'd played with the policeman last Christmas, which had led to that first drawing of Leon's blood. D's tongue could still taste the iron and salt, the sweet, desperate cry of every last corpuscle, as the minutiae of Leon's life force were absorbed into the count's being. He could not forget that feeling. The blood beneath his hands called to D now, and it was taking all of his will and strength to restrain him from answering.

To make things worse, though Leon winced at the prick of D's claws, it only served to encourage him. He grunted with pleasure and drove the smaller man violently back against the headboard. Pain exploded in D's skull, breaking his concentration and enraging his emergent inhuman nature. He felt his canines grow long, and a   
horrifying image if Leon, lying disemboweled and dismembered across his bed, appeared before D's mind's eye. {I refuse to be like them}, his conscience screamed in denial of the excitement this image stirred in him. {I am not my father's child!} 

Brilliant colours shone beneath the moonlight on the nearest window ledge, calling D's attention to the vase of flowers which rested there. The buds, just barely in bloom when he had cut them this morning, had burst open wide, the petals peeling back now, as he   
watched, their stamens thrust out urgently, filling the air with tiny motes of pollen. D focused on the flowers. His legs wrapped around Leon. Across the room, a pot of ancient bamboo reached its stalks up the wall, its many leaves elongating and shifting to obscure the bedroom door. D arched his back, absorbing the force of Leon's thrusts. A violet-flowered vine slowly snaked across the floor to encircle the bed, it's fuzzy-petaled blossoms widening and contracting in time with Leon's animal-like panting. 

The soft, green yearning energy of the plants, which spoke to him on a deep, subconscious level, was helping turn D's thoughts away from his carnivorous urges. But the visceral intensity of the sex, too closely linked with his body's other needs, still outweighed the plants' more calm, vegetable lust. D's whole body convulsed with the   
effort to suppress his hunger. 

Leon rose to his knees, lifting D's hips with him and quickening his pace even further. D's bestial instincts were now so far intertwined, he could no longer tell which urges he was losing control of. Far past the point where he could express himself in human terms, D clamped down on Leon's hips with an iron grip, intending to remove the catalyst for this exquisitely complex torture that was unraveling him so unbelievably fast. 

His extra pressure pushed Leon over the edge. 

As the mortal man finally reached the clouds and rain, he drew one last, panting breath before collapsing on top of D. "I love you," he sighed, before slipping into a semi-conscious stupor. 

Leon's words were like a slap across the face, shocking D back to himself. He lay still beneath the dead weight and stared at the canopy above, his vision slowly growing blurry. It was only when a stray tear slid into the corner of his mouth that D realised he was crying. He buried his face in Leon's shoulder, trying not to weep audibly. 

Leon came back to life very slowly. The most profound thought he could manage was, {This must be how a woman feels}. The ebbing tide of his climax lapped at him with ever-diminishing waves. It was unlike anything Leon had ever experienced. He had not been able to control himself once he'd begun, and he had never forced his body to   
work so hard in all his life. His heart felt like it was about to burst, and his muscles were swearing revenge. But sweet, sweet victory: toward the end, D's whole body had been shaking, almost as if he were suffering a seizure. Even though he couldn't feel much of   
anything outside his own body right now, Leon was sure he'd made D come. 

His senses gradually returned to him, and the first thing he noticed was that his shoulder was wet. He felt D trembling beneath him, and he slid his arms around the Chinese man's slender waist and squeezed him tight. What was wrong? A cold fear climbed its way up his throat, and Leon assumed the worst. "I'm so sorry." His voice was choked with remorse, as he apologised without knowing what he'd done. "I've   
fucked things up somehow, haven't I?" He drew back to look D in the face, and a splash of colour at the corner of his eye drew his attention to the blood on the sheets. 

"Oh my God!" he cried in horror. "I hurt you! Why didn't you stop me?" With his eyes, he searched D's body up and down for any other injury, but found none. When D did not respond, Leon cradled him in a protective embrace. After some moments, when the count's eyes did not open and he did not speak, Leon stood up. "I'm taking you to the hospital." His voice broke. "God, I'm so sorry! I swear I never meant to hurt you. I swear   
to God!" He finished, his innate depression tripling, "I promise, I'll never touch you again." 

D threw himself at Leon, clinging to his neck even more tightly than that last time the detective had come to his rescue. He forced himself to try to put his feelings into words, to allay Leon's guilt. "Please understand…it has been so long since…no one has spoken those words to me, since…since…"

"1945."   


It wasn't that D had not heard the words in so long. In the past fifty years, he had been presented with a multitude of words, phrases, poems, and offerings of love, serious expressions that had been made meaningless by those who said them. The words may have been "I love you", but what was really being said was "I worship your beauty", "I covet your power", "I revere your wisdom", or "I desire your body ". None of it had been said directly to D for his own sake. 

  
No one had presented those words to him with genuine feeling, from deep inside his heart, since the end of the last world war. The memories left over from his previous bodies were rarely clear. This one was particularly dim, but, it was as if D had been suddenly cast back in time. As the story flowed from his lips, he relived each moment, painful bit by bit.

To say the very least, the last world war had been hard on business. D had adored Berlin. The wild nightlife and the free flow of philosophy combined with art had never before been seen in the West. No city in the world at the time was more avant-garde, that was, until the Nazis came into their own and turned the cultural Mecca into a nightmarish wasteland. Grandfather found infinite amusement in the abrupt and complete change, and would not have missed the ensuing carnage and cruelty for anything; it suited his sense of humour. It had been he, after all, who had sold the kirin to the bitter Austrian soldier to begin with. 

D had been disillusioned by the unfolding events in Germany. Every now and then, he found inside himself a wild, inexplicable hope for humanity. This hope had blossomed in Berlin, and, to see the soul of the city exorcised, just made him sad. Though disappointed with the human race once again, D had still not been in the mood to watch the various horrific ways in which it could destroy itself. 

He had returned to America, hoping that its proclaimed Isolationism would hold fast through the coming struggle. There should have been plenty to keep him busy there, as well. A nation in the midst of a Great Depression would be in short supply of love, hope, and dreams. Sadly, he soon found that people were too distracted by poverty and   
hunger to shop for these things they most desperately needed. D amused himself with Chinatown's never-ending gossip and by perpetrating random acts of kindness toward humans. Grandfather would not have approved, but it hardly mattered, as his hands were full in Europe.

D's vacation from the war was not to last. Following Pearl Harbour, the state of California became Nazi Germany all over again, as racial hatred boomed along with the economy in the race to defeat "the Enemy". Just as in the case of the Axis leader's own country, war and a new sense of Nationalism seemed to be the best thing to motivate a   
people reduced to living in squalor. But not all Americans were to benefit from this scenario. In a direct correlation with the Germans' treatment of the "lower races", California's large Japanese population was uprooted from home and business in order to be herded off to internment camps, "for the sake of national security". 

  
Public opinion was hardly more kindly disposed toward the other local Asian communities. D watched Chinatown became a ghost town, where people were afraid to leave their homes for fear of being mistaken for a "Jap". For, as he overheard one Anglo-European woman remark to another at the bakery one day, "One of those slant-eyed moon-faces looks the same to me as another." He did not blame his neighbors for   
being more cautious, when, as one of the most outgoing members of the Chinese community, he experienced quite a bit of abuse and fell victim to several hate crimes at the hands of European Americans. 

Unwilling to hide in a corner until the social atmosphere cooled--that was, assuming it ever would--D conceived a plan by which he might be able to carry on the shop's purpose. Gathering the more theatrically-oriented pets, he closed the petshop and went on the road. Throwing together a show which featured such things as slight-of-hand, pet tricks, and the telling of traditional Asian fairytales, D travelled to different internment camps to offer dreams and distraction to the heavy spirits of the Japanese-American people. 

D initially met with much resistance from the National Guard. Though his performances were for the prisoners, most specifically for the children, he began to present his shows in English as well as in Japanese, and, soon, everyone looked forward to his visits. Because of this, the camp guards granted him certain liberties. Eventually, he was allowed to distribute food and spend time with the residents, when he was not performing. D kept very busy, becoming involved in everything from umpiring baseball games to supervising vegetable garden planting. 

Grandfather would have been horrified, but D enjoyed these things just as much as he enjoyed performing for an audience. The Japanese were gracious and entertaining hosts, especially considering that they had almost nothing to offer him. They all welcomed him as an honoured member of the family, and the warmth and closeness he   
experienced within these communities was both disturbing and wonderful. D had never known anything like it. 

What he enjoyed most was simply talking with people. Trapped in their barbed-wire enclosures with no idea how long they would be there, or what would become of them when they were finally allowed to leave, it was easy for the older adults, especially, to stagnate in their surroundings. As these honourable sensei were the most likely to   
recognise D for what he was, he took great pleasure in their company, distracting them from their misery with the excuse that he was trying to learn more stories to tell in the show. 

At one of the camps in New Mexico, D became fast friends with one 80-year-old woman in particular, who would address him only as Tenshi-sama, regardless of his objections. Tezuka Noriko came from an old temple family in Kyushu province. When still a girl, she had learned the sacred art of Shinto dance, unbeknownst to her father, the priest, from her older brothers. She showed D dances which honoured the rice harvest, the different kinds of waves on the ocean, the moon, and many more. The beauty of her art triggered memories in D of Heian-era Japan, memories that were very dear to him. For that alone, he could have spent months with her.

They would talk for hours on end about everything, about nothing, and especially about her favourite subject, her grandson. Having gone to Japan years ago to visit family and find his roots, her grandson had stayed to attend college and medical school. The war had irrevocably separated them, but Noriko claimed she spoke with him often, in spite   
of the distance and lack of a means for physical communication. Having witnessed her predisposition to capture and direct energy and spirit in her dance, D did not doubt the truth of her assertion. To his super-human eye, her ability appeared to be genetic, and so it was very likely that her grandson possessed it also.

To hear her speak of her grandson, one would have thought he'd hung the moon. He had been the first member of their family to achieve such a high degree of education. He was a staunch pacifist, and Noriko was sure he would have been imprisoned for refusing to join the military, if his medical skills had not been so desperately needed. And last, but not least, he was the most beautiful Japanese child ever to have been born in America.

D was no stranger to the exaggeration in which devoted human grandparents were prone to indulge, when speaking of their grandchildren. He humoured her, listening politely to every story she told, from when he had nursed a wounded baby bird back to health at the age of three, to when he had wept on his last Boys' Day, at fifteen, when he had received his father's silk hakama, and his samurai dolls had been taken out for the last time. In their quiet moments together, D mused what such a human being would actually be like. It was impossible. The man would have to be a buddha. 

Immersed in the different communities of his adopted families, the years of blood and death passed quickly for D. Finally, there came a time when the whole country's spirits lifted. Germany surrendered, and the dream of peace looked like it could become a reality. In anticipation of the event, D reopened the shop, though he was rarely there, as he continued to make his rounds and visit his Japanese friends. 

On July 16th, while the leaders of the Allied forces were deciding the fate of the world in Potsdam, D was discussing brocades with Noriko over tea. The blazingly hot New Mexico afternoon audibly paused for a moment D would never be able to fully erase from his memory. It was the split second before world history was to be irrevocably changed by the detonation of the first atomic bomb. 

Simultaneously, as, only miles away, the delicate desert ecosystem was scorched sterile, the sky above the internment camp was split open by a lightning bolt that demolished the highest guard tower in the camp, killing the guard on duty instantly. The accompanying thunderclap was almost as lethal, bringing most hearers within a ten mile radius to their knees, desperately attempting to cover their ears against the deafening peal.

The unearthly blast of radiation, a brilliant flash of death, and a blood-curdling summons caused D to lose consciousness all together. When he came to, Noriko was patting his cheeks with a cold, damp cloth and shaking him gently. A terrifying thunderstorm raged outside the poorly-built wooden shelter. D slowly realised that he was surrounded by as many of the camp residents as would fit inside the tiny dwelling. Their faces were at once scared and sad, and, when he looked back at his good friend, he saw tears streaming down her face. "Doumo arigatou gozaimashita, Tenshi-sama. Thank you so much for all you've done for us. The memory of your visits will stay with us for as long as we live." D sat up and put a comforting hand on her arm. Processing what had just happened outside, he could barely keep himself from crying. 

Noriko helped him stand. "Thank you for all you've done for this useless old woman. The time has come that you and I must part." As she ushered him out into the storm, all the members of D's adopted family bowed low. "Fortify your heart, Tenshi-sama," Noriko's words were almost lost in the howling wind. "Remember that to perform one's Duty is the greatest honour and the highest right, regardless of what that duty may be. No matter what comes." 

She stepped over the threshold with him, and her fine, gray hair was immediately plastered to her head with rain. "Look in on my baby for me. Tell him his Obaa-chan loves him very much, and pleads for him to lay aside his anger with his native country and come home." She stood on tip-toe and kissed her divine companion good-bye. "Now you must go, quickly, before He calls again." She turned and was gone. 

D did not have time to think. He slipped on his way down the wet steps, twisting his ankle badly. Reaching the ground thus ungracefully, he pressed his palms and forehead into the mud in obeisance. "My most humble and wretched apologies for keeping you waiting, Your Excellency. Please tell me how I may serve you." This particularly bloodthirsty and volatile kirin's request came as no surprise.

It took time to conclude the transaction. Though there were few honours greater than serving one of the Rulers, D disliked it. This particular member of the four holy beasts made him intensely nervous, and he would have preferred Grandfather handle the business. Grandfather, however, was nowhere to be found, and D was forced to travel back to Germany in order to close the contract. It was the last week of July before D was free again. At the gates of his favoured New Mexico internment camp, D was barred, by order of a new commanding officer, who had felt the need to heighten security, in order to prove his incredible military prowess. After a long and difficult round of inquiry, D was finally told that Tezuka Noriko had died of influenza only two days before. 

Devastated, he turned back for the city without a fight. His introspection on the drive home was interrupted by the radio's announcement that America and Britain had called on Japan to surrender or face "prompt and utter destruction". It had taken no stretch of the imagination to determine whose hungry claws would bring that about. Remembering Noriko's last request of him, D left immediately for Japan.  


Nagasaki's Chinatown was in far worse shape than its New World equivalents. The local residents, women and children only, for the men had been taken away to prison camps, wept at his feet when D arrived. They pressed in on him from all sides, like forlorn chicks, gravitating toward the comfort of a mother hen, repeating over and over, "Huoshenxian! An 'immortal in human form' has come to help us!" It tore at D's heart, but, under the circumstances, there was very little he could do for them. Likewise, they could do nothing to help him in his search. 

Getting past the military barricade proved difficult, even for D, and his research throughout the city even more so. He spoke Japanese flawlessly, without accent, and his hair was long enough that he could carefully arrange it to obscure his face. In Japanese dress, he could get by without anyone noticing he was Chinese, as long as no one gave him more than a cursory glance. Of course, this made the interrogation vital to his search almost impossible. 

August came, and D had still not found his quarry. Though he had learned the location of Dr. Tezuka's office in a local hospital and the address of his home residence, the doctor was nowhere to be found. It seemed he was often away in the surrounding towns and villages, helping the injured who were not so fortunate as to have a large medical center close by, when bombs descended on their homes. 

War torn Japan was desperately unpleasant, with reliable daily air raids almost to the minute, and a pervasive feeling of hunger, fear, and despair. Poverty and starvation were not as bad in the big naval city as they were in other places in the country, but D could feel its needy, grasping fingers brush against him from the distant countryside. He wanted to complete his task as soon as possible and return to America. It was not his affair how human beings chose to destroy one another, but he had no desire to witness it, much less be caught in the midst of it.

Finally, he could bear no more, and resigned himself to failure. It was an evening less than two weeks from the festival of Bon, and D was wandering through the temple district, enjoying the uneasy peace of the late summer night. He had just left an offering of food and flowers at Sofukuji Temple as an apology to Noriko for not having fulfilled her request. Something intoxicatingly beautiful hung in the air that night, making the heavy humidity somehow insignificant. D paused on Megane Bridge to watch the fireflies dance. Their tiny lights illuminated the enchanted darkness in steady bursts, the   
reflections shining off of the calm, black surface of the river, as if in apology for the unlit lanterns strung along its length. So much was not as it should have been. D leaned on the stone rail for support, taking comfort in the resilience of nature, which carried on its seasonal duties, regardless of what became of the surrounding human world. 

He looked down to see his reflection in the water and realised with a start that someone had drawn up next to him without his notice. Glancing up at his silent companion, D caught his breath, for, not an arm's length away, stood the most strikingly attractive mortal man he had ever seen.   


"The firefly departs

so quickly, so breathlessly

it leaves its light behind."

For a moment, D was caught in the literal meaning of the poem. The speaker's beauty shone in the lingering darkness, brighter than the candle-filled temple D had just left. His voice was deep and soft, and the manner in which he had spoken the haiku lent as much poetry to the lines as the words themselves. D could not take his eyes off of the man. Two lines of verse, descriptive of another beautiful Japanese poet a millenium before, sprang into his mind. 

The face seemed quite to shine in the evening dew,

But I was dazzled by the evening light.

When he had originally read the lines, skillful as they were, D had accepted them as mere romantic exaggeration. He would never have believed there existed a human being who befitted such poetry. "Mei ren," he gasped, a whisper so soft, no mortal ear could have discerned it among the nighttime insect song. His lips had moved of their own accord, unconsciously giving voice to his inner wonder. Hearing it aloud, D was suddenly confused and ashamed that he was having such thoughts about a human, and he forced himself to look away. 

His companion continued to gaze down the length of the river, toward the harbour. A cool breeze brought the scent of the ocean, and the stranger inhaled deeply. It was unclear whether the Japanese man had been speaking the poetry to D or to the evening itself. He had not acknowledged D's presence in any other way, but, somehow, D felt as though they were standing on the bridge together. He was disturbed to find himself blushing at the idea.

Finally, the other man spoke again, "Very clever of your people to send a kami to demand Japan's surrender, on behalf of the Allies." His tone was far from accusatory, and his rich voice was full of amusement, as he continued, "Then again, anything would be more effective than that foolish 'prompt and utter destruction' business Truman and Churchill came up with."

D was speechless. He could count on his hands the number of times he had been recognised immediately for what he was by a non-Chinese. In shock, his eyes returned to the speaker's face to search for an explanation. 

"My, you're even more breathtaking when you're dumbfounded," the Japanese man told him. His smile would have made a woman swoon, and, receiving the full force of it now, D had little doubt that it had done so in the past. 

"Please permit me to accompany you home. Though the streets of Nagasaki hold no danger for one of your kind, I would spare the life of the sailor who mistakes that lovely face for one of the Floating World and gets his innards eaten for asking your price." He offered D his arm, a markedly Western gesture, which made everything suddenly clear. 

What cheek! The fanciful illusion the evening and Dr. Tezuka's looks had cast might have lasted a bit longer, if he had stuck with poetry. "You insult me in the midst of your flattery, Oniisan," D answered, not a little miffed at the human's presumptuousness. In spite of this unexpected resolution to his search, D turned away and was considering leaving all together, when the human grabbed his hand and tucked it into the crook of his proffered arm. He kept his hand on top of D's and began to walk in the opposite direction of the harbour, taking his unwilling companion with him.

"Not at all," the doctor explained, calmly, as if they were having the most ordinary of conversations. "I bear the falcon no grudge for supping on rabbit, as it is his natural diet. We are all slaves to our inherent natures and the chain of Karma we have forged for ourselves. I would never look down on a creature for doing what he must by instinct, even though I have found the will to circumvent my own."

"You are a vegetarian?" D asked, his anger quickly lulled by the sweet music in the taller man's voice. 

"Sou," the Japanese man replied. "A resolution I came to on my own, years ago, as I'm not Buddhist or culturally vegetarian, like so many of my countrymen. Though, even if it were available, a meat-eater in my profession would find it hard to do so. After sewing and bandaging tattered flesh back together on an hourly basis, day after day, one type of meat begins to look the same as another. Few things remain palatable." He sighed, and it was as if he were an old man, trying to rid himself of the heaviness that weighs down one's heart after a lifetime of tragedy and horror. D's free hand rose to take its place next to the captive on the doctor's elbow. Why did he feel a sudden need to comfort a human he hardly knew? 

They passed some military police on routine patrol, and D demurely hid his face. The two officers jealously regarded the couple, walking in such a shamelessly intimate manner, and shared a knowing glance, as the bishounen, dressed in silks too fine and colours too ornate, hid his face from them. One of them winked at Dr. Tezuka and muttered something not worth remembering. D's escort chuckled for the MPs to hear and muttered under his breath, "Hentai yarou!" D hid a smile behind one long kimono sleeve. 

When they were well out of the soldiers' earshot, D returned to the previous subject. "I have not eaten flesh of any kind for well over a millenium."

"Really?" His companion stopped to examine him more closely, and D's heart pounded faster in his chest. "How extraordinary." The Japanese man's eyes, behind his flattering wire-rimmed glasses, were disorientingly intense and large, causing D to wonder for a moment if he was not part European. As he bent forward to look into D's face, a strand of hair escaped his ponytail to hang most endearingly at his temple. D noted that he showed no surprise, when he saw the two different eye colours. In fact, he took a good, long look at whatever it was he saw in D's eyes. 

Noriko's grandson really was disarmingly handsome. D took the doctor's loose strand of hair between his long index and middle fingernails and tucked it gently back behind his ear. The Japanese man caught D's hand on its way back, and held it gently in his own. With his free hand, the doctor smoothed his own hair back, unconsciously, his eyes never leaving D's face. " Akuma-hime, I think I may have to kiss you now," the taller man told him, gravely.

D would have been highly amused at the term, even had he not been completely taken with the doctor. He moved closer to his companion and breathed, "'I would never look down on a creature for doing what he must, by instinct.'" 

The mortal man took D's face in his hands and kissed him slowly and very gently, melting D's bones into a useless gelatin. The doctor lingered as long as possible, finally taking his hands away with a sigh. D saw his own feelings mirrored in the eyes of his companion, which had gone seductively misty with longing. "Why do you not escort me to your home instead," D suggested, taking the doctor's arm again with both hands. 

"Of course," Dr. Tezuka replied, placing his hand on top of D's, as they started off again. "That's where we've been headed from the beginning. Naturally, with who you are, you don't have a home in Nagasaki to which I might accompany you."

D merely laughed at his impertinence this time. "You know," he told his escort, "if you were not an American, I might be surprised at your lack of manners."

The doctor's surprised laughter was delightfully childlike, as he replied, in English, "Ouch."

The doctor's home stood far back in the hills that rose away from the harbour in a protective semi-circle. It was a modest dwelling, but gigantic, considering it housed only one person. The stone path to the front porch wound through a priceless, fragile bonsai garden. D stopped to admire it, wondering who had the time or money to care for the tiny trees in such times. His companion guessed his thoughts. "I don't sleep much," he confided. "Gardening relaxes me, and my children don't seem to mind being tended by moonlight." 

D could picture him bending over one of the dwarf plants, squinting at his pruning implements by lantern light, so as to make just the right cut. It was an endearing image. And the miniature grove of trees was indeed very happy. "Of course," D explained. "They adore you." Why was everything about this man so charming? D felt as if some power had conspired against him to cast a spell. He was still struggling stubbornly against the pull of these frightening, irrational feelings he was having.

"Without knowing love   
for one's children, there's no truth  
in cherry blossoms."

Poetry again. D recognised it as Bashou this time. He looked up at his companion, who was smiling, sadly. "They are my family, now. At times, my love for them is all I have." The depth of his emotion would have moved a grown man to tears. D could have made love to him right then and there, this singular man who sought comfort in his garden and showered his affection on plants, after forcing himself through long days of human pain and suffering. 

Dr. Tezuka turned his attention away from his treasured garden, growing self-conscious, as he remembered he was not alone. "You're looking at me strangely. I admit, I have thought about children…I love children…but…women…they're not for me."

D felt as though he might scream, if the other man kept saying exact right thing after exact right thing. Lust made him forceful, and he jerked the Japanese man close, slowly shutting his eyes, as he sighed into the other man's lips, begging to be kissed, "Hikaru…" 

But the doctor did not grant his request. "Tenshi no Oujisama…" He slid his hand into D's hair, just before the Chinese man began to worry that he would whine, if Hikaru did not kiss him soon. D opened his eyes and wrapped his arms around the taller man, feeling his broad ribcage expand with his quickened, excited breathing. "We should go inside," he said at last, almost panting. D did not answer, but began to push him, backwards, in the direction of the house.  


Once inside, Hikaru headed immediately for a room at the back of the house, calling over his shoulder, "I don't know about you, but I'm for a bath right now." D sighed in frustration. A good, long soak in a deep Japanese bathtub did sound good after the exhausting day he'd had, walking around the city and making inquiries. But there was something he wanted much more right now, and he did not want to wait. He followed his host down a short hall to the bathroom, where Hikaru was laying the fire beneath the tub. 

D watched quietly, until the doctor stood and grabbed the water buckets to go outside. In the blink of an eye, D dropped to the floor and swept his legs out to knock Hikaru's feet from beneath him. Just as suddenly, D was back on his feet, standing politely in the doorway, pondering how many seconds he would be able to wait before pouncing on his fallen host.

He blinked. Hikaru was still standing, just as he had been a moment before. "How…?!" D could not believe either the fact that his attack had been unsuccessful, or that the doctor had parried his move without him seeing it. 

His host merely smiled and opened the shouji which led out to the back garden and the well. "This won't take long," he told his guest, on the way out the door. D's body trembled. A doctor, a poet, a gardener, and now a student of wu-hsia, as well. What other surprises did Dr. Tezuka hold? D resigned himself to the wait, and wandered back toward the living area, biting his nails in agitation. 

Not long after, he was soaking in boiling hot water, by himself, and even more frustrated. They had washed up together, and, just when the foreplay was developing delightfully, Hikaru had turned D around and given him a gentle push toward the bath. "Back in a minute," he'd said and quickly disappeared, leaving his guest lathered with soap, with only the sound of his panting reverberating against the walls of the empty room for company. It had taken D a moment to realise what had just happened. When his outrage had begun to fade, he had climbed into the tub for warmth. 

Steam writhed in D's nearly shoulder-length hair, making it even flatter than usual, and doing nothing for his mood. He had never been made to wait like this before. He did not think he liked it at all. How could a mortal resist him for even a moment, much less when his hormones were in such a rage? D had never been so forward and active in pursuit of a partner. He had never HAD to be. His carefully-schooled patience and calm demeanor were in tatters. How had his willpower deteriorated to this point? Perhaps this lesson had come just in the nick of time. 

Fine, then. D would play along and learn from the aggravation of being put off. Existence was a continuous learning experience, after all, and D refused to lose face because of a mortal, no matter how attractive. No doubt, Hikaru's looks had allowed him to dictate the rules like this in his experiences up until now. D would let him continue to believe he was in control. As long as he eventually got what he was being made to wait for. 

The soft sliding of the shouji heralded his host's return. D took a deep breath and told his heart to stay still. He closed his eyes and stretched himself out, forcing his body to relax. He didn't open his eyes, until he felt the vibration of something being set near his elbow. When he looked up, Hikaru was bending over him, his glorious nudity disappointingly concealed by a yukata. He held out a small tray on which rested a teapot, two cups, and a plate of sweets and rice balls. "I'm sorry I have no exotic sweets to offer you. I'm such a poor host, but…these bland rice crackers are all I have right now." 

D's eyes widened with pleasure. Sitting in the midst of the ring of sweet crackers was a carefully-sculpted dome of sugared bean paste. He had not had anything sweet for nearly a week now, as candy and baked goods of any kind were impossible to find in food-deprived Japan. The "bland crackers" were an amazing luxury for the times. D snagged one and savoured it, lying back against the rim of the bath. 

He looked up from his reverie to find his host admiring him through the shameless camouflage of clear bath water. Pleased that Hikaru had not somehow changed his mind or forgotten what they had started, D smiled slily. "But, doctor, surely, in your profession, the human form has grown a bit boring for you…"

"The human form, yes," he answered, bending to dip one hand into the water and trace a line down D's body, from his shoulder to his hip, with his index finger. D shivered and caught the doctor's hand, before he could withdraw it. Hikaru met D's eyes and smiled. "Who is the falcon and who is the rabbit, I wonder," the human mused aloud. 

D answered his question by tearing away the sash of his cotton kimono and giving the hem a good yank to pull the collar down around the Japanese man's shoulders. Hikaru chuckled as he shrugged the rest of the way out of his yukata. He withdrew his hand from D's grasp and carefully perched on the rim of the tub, right next to the tea tray. "And so, thus begins our scientific experiment in which we shall attempt to prove once and for all the importance of food to the Chinese." He grinned impishly. "Which of these two alternatives will he choose? The world waits with baited breath." 

D feigned indecision, placing a fingernail to his lips as his eyes wandered back and forth from the bean paste to exquisite, smooth, tan skin. Hikaru laughed delightedly at his guest's little performance. "You see? Not such an easy decision, after all. Come now, which will it be? Food or sex?"

D took another cracker from the nearby tray, scooping up a bit of sweet paste with it, and Hikaru began to stand up and move away. "Yes please," the Chinese creature said sweetly, clamping down on the human's wrist before he could move out of reach. Hikaru looked at him expectantly and D's eyelids drooped seductively. Slowly and sensuously, he laid the food on his extended tongue, before violently jerking his host into the water with him. 

Hikaru was unprepared for D's strength. There was an enormous splash, and then the shorter man was on top of him. The predatory look in D's mismatched eyes was an interesting contrast to his mouth, from which protruded half of the cracker. Hikaru laughed and leaned forward to grab it in his teeth. Another struggle ensued for the confection. It was no contest. D quickly won both the cracker and the doctor's lips. 

His heart beat wildly, as the Japanese man's hands stroked the length of his back once, twice, and then returned to tangle themselves in his limp, silky hair. What was it about this human that made him feel like he was having a heart-attack? He hadn't wanted anyone this badly in a very long time. Willpower be damned. He was going to indulge himself. 

D spread Hikaru's knees and nestled closer. The human moaned and wrapped his legs around the immortal. D lifted him out of the water, just enough to tease his chest and torso with tongue, teeth, and nails. He continued for some time, until Hikaru was panting desperately and straining against him, unconsciously emitting soft whimpers. D lay him back down and pulled their bodies apart, so that his hands could explore the rest of his partner. 

Hikaru was very fit for a doctor. D should have guessed sooner that he practiced wu-hsia. He played a guessing game of which discipline it was, as his long fingers traced lines up and down Hikaru's thighs, taunting and stimulating his erogenous zones. The doctor's body was every bit as lovely as his face. D wanted to devour his beauty, to consume it in an engulfing embrace which would make this human a part of him forever. But this type of beauty went straight to the heart and was so precious for the exact reason that it was fleeting. No power of nature could make its delicate blossom last. D's heart grew sad at the thought.

"Mono no aware," Hikaru said, eerily picking up D's thoughts again. He smiled, invitingly. "In other words, you'd better enjoy me now, because we may all die tomorrow." 

D was preparing to do just this, when, as if to confirm Hikaru's assertion, he heard a B-29 overhead. The human's body, ripe and relaxed, became taut with fear. D wrapped his arms around Hikaru and turned out the house lights with a thought. Minutes passed. The plane's engine faded into the distance, and there were no explosions. 

"It's too late at night for them, anyway," Hikaru reassured himself, beginning to breathe again. "I don't know what MacArthur is thinking." 

D closed his eyes and leaned his head against Hikaru's damp shoulder. "Let us declare an end to the war, just for tonight," he said, pouring calm and comfort into his companion through his embrace. 

Hikaru laughed, ruefully. "Wouldn't it be nice, if it were that easy?" 

His sentence ended in a gasp, as D's hands returned to their previous occupation. Hikaru grabbed D by the wrists, restraining him in order to take the initiative, molding the count's pale, adolescent perfection seamlessly against his own shining, dark one. "Make me forget," he begged. "Just for tonight." And D did. 

In the blanketed silence of pre-dawn, D snuggled into the hollow of Hikaru's shoulder, squeezing his slender form tight against his lover's side. As their sweat dried, cooling their overheated bodies from the hot summer air, their breathing continued synchronously, as it had begun somewhere in the midst of the night's activities. Together, they sighed contentedly, enjoying an exhausted after-glow. 

After some time, Hikaru said, "Thank you," his deep voice bringing D back from the verge of a pre-sleep dream.

He smiled against the human's shoulder. "You speak as if the pleasure-giving was one-sided." D thought back on when they had eventually moved from the bath to the futon. Sitting in Hikaru's lap, D's back clutched against the broad, dark chest, he had begun to enjoy himself a little too much. Thorny, flowering vines had emerged from his seemingly human body. Amazingly, Hikaru had merely chuckled and lifted D off of him, then laid back and offered his chagrined partner the more active role. In spite of the intimate, uncomfortable scratches the doctor had sustained, he had trusted D to be seme, from which point he could better control his enjoyment and thus his physical reactions. With D in control, their love-making had gone on for hours, and would have continued, if their endurance had allowed. D could not imagine better sex. "I must thank YOU, as well."

Hikaru stroked D's hair. "That's not what I meant. You've done me a great honour by staying with me tonight. I know your kind merely pass through the lives of humans, lingering only briefly, if at all. I just wanted to make sure you knew, before you disappeared." Something deep and heavy waited just behind the doctor's words. Something frightening. D was drawing closer and closer to it every second he spent with Hikaru. He did not want to know what it was. 

Physical intimacy with a human, though forbidden by his grandfather, was one trespass D could forgive himself. A fleeting thing which held no significance in the grand scheme of things. At least, that's what D had first thought. But, from the moment they'd met, D had felt irresistibly drawn toward Hikaru, as if both of them were being compelled by a foreign consciousness. Up until now, he could have convinced himself that it was merely a strong physical attraction. But that terrible, heavy thing lurked beneath what Hikaru had said, waiting to be acknowledged. D did not know what to do with the feeling. It both repulsed him and gave him life. He had not experienced the like before. "Know…what?" he found himself asking, without wanting to.

Hikaru took D's hand in his and rested both in the center of his chest, taking several contemplative breaths before answering. " I do not deserve such attentions as these from one such as yourself. Tenshi no Oujisama…

You linger among the shallow pools of light,

While I dwell in the darkness.

Thank you for illumining my darkness. Even for this brief moment…you've made me so happy. It's an absolute truth I can hold onto, when I'm alone again." 

The sadness and resignation in Hikaru's voice constricted D's throat. He crawled on top of the Japanese man, kissing him desperately, over and over again, trying to drive the pain away. His voice was thick with emotion, when he stopped to ask, "Would you be rid of me so quickly?"

Hikaru placed a hand on D's cool cheek and looked apologetically into the bi-coloured eyes. "Of course not!"

D slipped both arms around his shoulders and held the doctor tight. "I am pleased, for I have no intentions of being parted from you any time soon. I have yet to fulfil my original purpose in coming here." 

Beneath him, Hikaru's body went tense. D felt suddenly awkward. He had not thought about the reason why he had originally been looking for Hikaru all night. In the pregnant pause, the Japanese man expelled the breath he had been holding, and his body slowly began to relax. D waited until he was completely at rest once more. 

Enough time had passed, and Hikaru was so silent, D was afraid he might have fallen asleep. He took a hesitant breath, preparing to begin the unpleasant, depressing conversation. 

"Don't say it," Hikaru stopped him before he could speak. "I know why you're here."  


D's brow furrowed in confusion for just a heartbeat. Then he remembered. "Ah, it is not as a representative—"

"I know," Hikaru interrupted. "Why would someone like you care about this war, anyway? No, I know why you came. I know everything. 

"When I got back to the city this evening, and I heard about the bishounen that had been asking about me all over town, I knew it had to be you. Didn't you wonder how I recognised you on Megane-bashi Bridge last night, in the dark? Grandmother started relaying images of you to me months ago." He reached up and tenderly brushed the cascade of hair back from D's golden eye, caressing his face. "And yours is hardly a forgettable face."

Hikaru closed his eyes, the memory painful, but managed a smile anyway. "She's always been such a conniving old woman. Did you know she'd planned to get us together from the moment she met you?" He laughed at D's startled silence. "I see you didn't. It's all right. She always does things like this." Another rueful laugh. "She knows my tastes too well." 

One strong hand covetously stroked D's back, while the one on his cheek slid back to play with the hair at the nape of his neck, giving D goosebumps. "I wouldn't have traded tonight for my life. But I hought it only fair that you know what was going on." He took one of D's arms from around him and held the delicate wrist up to his lips, kissing the tender flesh on the inside. "I'm sorry. I've shocked you."

"Not at all." D closed his eyes and tried to ignore Hikaru's hands and concentrate on the conversation. In spite of his fatigue, his body was beginning to react to the doctor's caresses, and the muscular form beneath him was so tempting. "I had not thought that your grandmother might have had an ulterior motive in making this request of me, but that is because I had not considered the possibility." He thought back on how she had sold Hikaru to him in almost every conversation they'd had. It suddenly made perfect sense. "I did know her fairly well. It does not surprise me, in hindsight. However, I believe you are mistaken in thinking that is the only reason she sent me."

Hikaru was quiet. His hands fell away and he turned so that D slid off of him. The doctor rearranged himself on the headrest, uncomfortably, expelling a harsh, frustrated breath. "My grandmother is so…" he bit off the last of the sentence, painfully. "She was so stubborn. I can't believe she would still think I could be convinced to return to that fucking country, after everything that's happened. Even after those sons of bitches killed her!" 

Silent, angry tears splashed onto the fabric supporting his head. He rolled over, so that his back was to D. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't talk like this in front of you."

D rubbed his back, comfortingly. "It is all right. I take no offense. I understand."

Hikaru turned back to face him, his cheeks glistening. "Do you? Or are you really going to ask me to go back there?"

D hesitated. He could tell it would be pointless to have this discussion now, when Hikaru was so upset. "It was her request, not mine. But the decision is yours."

The doctor sighed. "You're good. But I have years of guilt built up about this already. One more day isn't going to change my mind."

D leaned forward to wipe the tears from Hikaru's face with his bare hands. "Please. Consider your answer carefully. You do not have to decide just now. I will be here, waiting, until you have had time to give it sufficient thought."

Hikaru's deep brown eyes filled with grief. "And then you'll leave." 

Just moments before, he had seemed so stoic, professing that it was natural that D would leave. But that had been an act, and a fragile one, by how quickly it crumbled now. 

D could hardly bear to look at him. The look in the human's eyes, needy and utterly alone, was bringing him to the verge of tears, as well. He reached up to smooth back the doctor's long, black hair, reassuringly. "I am here now."

Hikaru dove at him, burying his face in D's taut stomach and wrapping him in a death grip, as the doctor's shoulders shook with sobs. "Don't leave me. Please don't go." 

D held him protectively and did his best to calm and comfort him without words. {None of this is necessary}, he wanted to say.{Just come back to America with me, and we can be together}. But this was not the time for an argument. How long would he have to change Hikaru's mind? And what was it going to take to do it? 

At last, the Japanese man drifted into an exhausted sleep, though his grip on D did not slacken. D curled his body around Hikaru and forced himself to sleep, too. 

When he awakened a few hours later, he was alone on the futon. Lying next to him on the pillow was an evergreen twig, surrounded by a bouquet of wildflowers, all wrapped in a piece of stationery. He picked it up and unrolled the paper, reminding bleary eyes that it was not Chinese they were attempting to read. Of course. He should have known. It was an ariake. 

All too soon, I fear,

Wild sobs will expose my love, 

As wind-driven waves,

Crashing onto the beaches,

Lay bare the roots of the pines.

He heard a noise outside and leapt up, scattering the flowers, to run to the door. Hikaru was just climbing onto his bicycle, when D slid the door open. He looked up at his guest, his sweet smile full of adoration. "The sleeping prince has awakened."  


D's voice sounded petulant, even to his own ears. "You were going to leave without me?" The thought of being separated from Hikaru for a moment was suddenly unbearable.

The Japanese man dismounted and kicked down the bicycle stand. "I have to work. I didn't want to wake you."

D took a step out onto the porch. "I shall come, too."

Hikaru approached hurriedly, blocking his way with arms thrown wide. "Then I would recommend some clothes, My Love," he said, wrapping his arms around the shorter man's nude form. D blushed. He could not believe he had forgotten, in his hurry. Hikaru's body pressed him back against the doorframe, as his lips caressed D's bare throat. "I'm glad the neighbors are already gone, or I might have had to get jealous." 

Dark fingers danced across pale skin, and D's breath was starting to come in gasps. "Stop, or you will never get to work." 

Hikaru drew back, reluctantly. "I suppose you're right. Let's go find you some clothes." 

After a brief visit to the hospital for supplies, they rode into the northern peninsula to make the rounds of Hikaru's patients. Riding all that way on the bicycle was thrilling. Grandfather had not allowed D to ride one before, much less together with someone else. Much of the countryside had remained unaffected by the shelling, and D took in the beauty of his surroundings, as he basked in the presence of the man pedaling behind him. He could not understand why he was so happy, but he no longer questioned it. 

Hikaru stopped several times, to point out some particular natural point of interest, a large frog pond, a sacred rock, or yorishiro, that had not been marked as such with shimenawa. Each time, D wanted to pull him down into the grass and delay their journey a bit more, but he refrained. 

When they reached the first village, D was forced to relinquish the sunlight that had been, since last night, shining only for him, so that it could broaden its band and warm a larger group of people. It   
was almost worth it, just to see Hikaru work. 

D was amazed by how his manner shifted to suit each patient. While changing bandages for a despairing young woman who'd lost both her legs, he rattled off humourous anecdotes, sometimes stopping to act out key points, smiling and winking at her until she could not laugh any more. On entering the home of a consumptive, elderly man, who had stayed alive by force of will alone, just so that he might see Dr. Tezuka again, Hikaru knelt by the bedside and held his hand, whispering soothing truths and reciting sutras until someone returned with a monk. The doctor's gentle charisma brought as much healing to the sick and wounded as his hands and medicines. The same energy-channeling ability D had seen Noriko use in her dance, Hikaru used to put his patients at ease, both physically and spiritually. After hours of watching the doctor exert his gift, D began to worry, but Hikaru's smile and sense of humour never flagged. 

When asked about his mysterious new assistant, Hikaru introduced D as his old friend, Tou no Chuujou, to the great amusement of all the adults present. Not an eyebrow was raised that night, when the doctor asked their host for a private room for both of them. There seemed no end to the jealous glares D received from all of the young ladies, however, and several of the men, as well. 

As they lay in each other's arms late that night, waiting for sleep, D told him how impressed he was by what he had seen Hikaru do that day. The doctor smiled into D's hair. "I was performing for you as well as for them today, so it was quite a bit more than I usually do."

"Do not be modest," D chided. "You would have tied yourself in knots to make those people feel better, whether I had been watching or not."

Hikaru tightened his arms around D. "Now you sound jealous. Tenshi no Oujisama, do you think so little of yourself?" 

D looked up to face him, allowing their breath to mingle for an intimate moment before kissing him very gently on the lips. "You have so many names for me, and yet, you have never asked me my real name."

"How presumptuous it would be for a mere human to ask the true name of one such as yourself. I would never—" D snuggled closer and whispered it into Hikaru's ear. 

The mortal took a moment to digest what he'd just heard. "That's…beautiful. But I'd never be able to pronounce it in a hundred years." 

D smiled. "I did not ask you to." 

"But naturally, you expect some sort of payment for bestowing such a gift," Hikaru prompted, his hands roving down the slender body pressed against him. 

"Naturally," D replied, before finding Hikaru's lips again. 

Two more days passed the same way, before the evening of the second found them finally back in Nagasaki. Hikaru chased D into the back garden while he was making dinner, saying that he was not allowed to see the preparations, because it was a surprise. 

D sat by the empty koi pond, conversing with bamboo and willow and trying to get his thoughts into some sort of order. His strange, confusing feelings had only worsened with their time together. Over the past three days, he had assisted Hikaru in countless examinations and minor surgeries. With anyone else, it would have been harrowing, disgusting work. D would not have done it for anyone else, but, being with Hikaru made the time pass quickly, and he never tired of watching the doctor interact with patients. Seeing him with the children, especially, bred strange thoughts inside D. He found himself longing for impossible things, like growing old together. He day-dreamed the most disgusting scenarios, about being human and raising children, something he had resolved never to do, if for no other reason than to spite his father. 

But, with Hikaru, things had changed. D himself had changed. Old resolutions meant little if anything to the person he was now. It was terrifying and wonderful all at once. It was hard for D to concentrate on any one of these ideas at once. And there was something he was forgetting. Something important. 

Lost in his endless cycle of thoughts, D had no idea how much time had passed, when Hikaru beckoned from the house behind him. "Your surprise is ready," he called. 

D turned to find him framed in the back door, wearing only his kimono, which hung invitingly open, and holding a large cake. D remembered the stop they had made in the city on the way back, and now he understood why Hikaru had been so secretive about the contents of the bag with which he had returned. The cake was freshly baked. D could smell the sweet beans that had been mixed into the rice flour, and the luscious icing and candied fruit beckoned to him over the distance. Saliva practically running down his chin, he flew toward the house. 

But Hikaru was faster. "Ot-to!" He smacked the glorious pastry into his torso, smearing cake all over his chest and stomach. D froze at the edge of the back porch, half mad with desire. "Oh no!" Hikaru's feigned innocence might have been more convincing, had he not been wearing a wide, devilish smile. "How did that happen?" 

His head rebounded off of the hard wood of the bathroom floor, as D, in a feeding frenzy, knocked him down none too gently. "Hey…OUCH!" Hikaru was starting to think that perhaps this had not been the best idea he'd ever had. He began to genuinely fear for his well-being as teeth and claws dug into him beyond what was merely rough foreplay. "Remember I'm underneath that food you're wolfing!" he warned.

To his relief, D's mouth became more gentle, and his hands wandered in search of other employment. "I remember," D reassured him with more than words.

Late that night, D listened to the soothing sound of Hikaru's even breathing, as he lay sleeping beside him on the futon. D was tired, but he was wide awake. He had finally remembered the important thing his mind had been avoiding these past few days: leaving. How could he have forgotten about the war while living in the midst of it? D berated himself for his loss of focus. But he knew exactly why it had happened. He had done it to himself intentionally. Leaving Japan without Hikaru was no longer an option. 

Knowing sleep would never come in his current mental state, D rose quietly, so as not to disturb Hikaru, and pulled on a pair of the doctor's slacks, before wandering out to the back garden. He decided that Taijiquan would be good for restoring his focus and getting his body relaxed. He moved slowly through the garden, as he practiced the cycle of forms, calmly breathing in the thick, humid air and listening to the song of the late summer insects. After finishing the last one, he stopped to gaze serenely at the reflection of moonlight on the water of the pond. 

He was startled by applause from behind him. "That was magnificent! Show me something else," Hikaru called from the back porch, stepping down to get a better view. 

D smiled, as he thought up something suitably impressive. After a moment's pause, he leapt easily to the roof of the house, his bare feet making no sound, as he touched down.

Hikaru roared with laughter, applauding wildly. "Akuma-hime, that's amazing!" 

Mortified at the amount of noise his human was making, D quickly jumped back down to the ground, dropping into Hikaru's embrace. "Shhh! The neighbors!" he hissed, covering the doctor's mouth with one hand. 

He gasped as Hikaru pushed him off-balance, sweeping him up and carrying him to the edge of the koi pond, where he laid him gently in the surrounding reeds. The doctor held and kissed the hand covering his lips, as he reclined next to D. "To the ninth hell with the neighbors. They're not what drew me out here." Any further objection or response D might have been forming was torn from him, along with the slacks he was wearing. 

Hikaru was due at the naval hospital the next morning, but he'd told D he was going to be late, so that they could sleep in together. About mid-morning, D woke with a start from a deep, content sleep, his heart pounding in his chest. The echoes of the scream that had awakened him still hung in the air, and there was a horrible, familiar roaring inside his head that was coming from far away.   


When D's eyes were able to focus, he saw Hikaru kneeling beside him on the futon, fully clothed, and gripping a crushed poppy, wrapped in a piece of paper he must have been preparing to leave. His body was convulsing with dry heaves, and his handsome face was streaked with moisture from his eyes and nose. D willed himself into a state of equilibrium, obtained a vertical position, and put his arms around Hikaru, protectively. 

The doctor refused his embrace. "Wh—at was that?" he choked, more tears splashing onto the inside of his glasses.

"I—" D hesitated. "I am not certain…"

The look in Hikaru's eyes was enough to make D cut his own throat. The doctor knew his lover had lied to him, and the hurt that showed on his face reached from deep within him. He rose to his feet, unsteadily. 

D sprang up, reaching for him, in case he should lose his balance. Hikaru shoved him roughly away. "I have to go to work," he intoned dully, not looking at the shorter man, who was gasping for air around the knot of pain in his chest. "We've been spending too much time together. It looks like both of us have started taking things for granted about one another."

He walked shakily to the door, as D, left alone by the futon, struggled to find his voice. "Wait!" he called, weakly, as Hikaru stepped across the threshold. The Japanese man did not look back, but merely closed the shouji behind him. Remembering not to repeat his previous mistake, D grabbed the nearest kimono and pulled it on, as he ran to the door. By the time he reached it, the doctor was already past the garden gate, descending the road to the city at a fast clip. D leaned his head against the doorframe, utterly discouraged. 

What did this mean now? Should he pursue Hikaru to the city? {No. Surely that will only make him angry, right now}, he told himself. The thought of being apart from him for an entire day was physically painful. Searching for consolation, D remembered the injured flower that lay on his pillow and rushed to read the words which accompanied it.

Hidden-in-winter  
The spring moors are all aflame—  
And he who burns them,  
Can he never burn enough,  
That he now sets fire to my heart?

D clutched the wrinkled paper to his breast. Feelings like this could not simply disappear under stress, could they? He refused to entertain such a possibility. Hikaru's feelings had simply been momentarily eclipsed, but the sun did not cease to exist, merely because the moon obscured it from the Earth. 

He would be back tonight, and D would do whatever it took to make things right again. He willed no more bombs to drop and set about gathering the doctor's personal effects. When Hikaru returned home from work, everything would be packed and ready to leave. 

The afternoon found D in the city, buying pots for the bonsai garden. Hikaru's precious children could not be left behind. In town, everyone was gathered around their radios, listening to the horrific in-coming reports of carnage from Hiroshima. D shuddered and tried not to listen. Feeling it happen had been bad enough. Hearing descriptions and death counts only served to put faces to the horror in his mind. 

As he worked the rest of the day, images of all the Japanese he'd ever known mingled in his imagination with the scene of destruction, eastward. There was no sense to the deranged daymare, which painted long-gone court nobles dying gruesome deaths alongside Noriko and a camp baseball team from America. 

Hikaru was the only figure D would not let his subconscious blemish. Every time his fearful machinations would begin to include the doctor in some terrifying scene, D would insert himself, instead. The kirin would not have him. No matter what, it would not have HIM. 

The doctor returned that evening to find half his garden uprooted and waiting for him in the front room of his house, along with several bags of luggage. D knelt quietly at the chabudai, the labour-intensive   
dinner he'd prepared laid out before him. 

Observing D's handiwork, the Japanese man's eyes were flat and dead, but a deeply buried anger cast a faint glow on his dark brown irises. "What is this?" he asked, making no move to join D at the table. 

D rose, all of his nerves jangling, on edge, and hurried over to the taller man. His fear of   
Hikaru's reaction made his entire demeanor, body language and voice, twice as demure as Grandfather had taught him. He was practically a woman, his fingers dancing nervously at Hikaru's elbow, as he said, cautiously, "Please. We must leave…soon…"

He cried out, as the human grabbed him by the arms, hard enough to leave finger-shaped bruises. "What have you done?!" he shouted into D's face, shaking him. The slight man silently shook his head, bravely meeting the accusation in his lover's eyes and willing Hikaru to believe his innocence. The doctor's grip loosened for a moment, as a look of pain crumpled his features, followed quickly by a flash of rage. He threw D to the floor and stood still a moment, catching his breath. From the sound, Hikaru was trying not to cry. "Akuma! Bakemono! Shinigami!" D lay on the floor, paralysed by the heart-rending attack. 

Hikaru dropped down beside him, grabbing D by the throat and slamming his head into the tatami. "If I kill you right now," his strong fingers closed around D's adam's apple, and the thumb of his other hand pressed upward into the immortal's carotid artery, "will that save Japan? Will it stop this from happening again?" The force of the energy pouring down the human's arm would have given him the strength to kill D's body, even had the prone figure not been wishing for death at that moment.

D reached up and gently stroked one of the hands that offered a short respite from his immortality. "You know it will not," he answered softly. 

With a palpable relief that made D's heart start to beat again, Hikaru let go of him. D sat up and draped himself hesitantly across the human's shoulders. "Please come back to America with me. Please."

Hikaru turned on him with a more reasonable anger. "So that I can be put away in one of those camps with other 'enemies of the state'? No, wait, maybe I can be executed as a traitor!"

D took his hand, pleading. "That would not happen. You would be with me." 

This time, the doctor's tone was intentionally hurtful, his laughter mean. "So that you would have another pet to add to your menagerie? I bet you've always wanted your very own human."

Without thinking, D cracked him across the face. He regretted it immediately, his expression just as stricken as Hikaru's. He had not struck the doctor anywhere near as hard as he was capable, but the dark cheek started to glow an ugly red. Hikaru's glasses hung askew on his face, one ear piece having jumped loose. D reached out to fix them, only to have his hands batted away. 

D was at his wits' end. He had no idea what else to do. A rain of heavy tears began to fall on his perfect cheekbones. "I can not live without you," he said, his voice husky with emotion he'd tried his best to deny. 

"This is my country, and I will not leave it. If it is its destiny to be utterly obliterated, then it is mine, as well. If you truly loved me, you would not ask me to do such a dishonourable thing as desert   
my people in the face of disaster." 

Hikaru turned away, refusing to be moved, as D dissolved into despair. "Please leave. You are no longer welcome here." He stood and pointedly opened the door. "I don't want to see your face again," were his last words before leaving the room. 

D looked outside through blurred vision at the glorious sunset, which had painted the enormous, fluffy clouds streaming over the hills the most beautiful hues of red and violet. As he took his two poems and the crippled poppy and stumbled outside for the last time, he heard muffled sobs begin to issue from the back of the house.

Eventually, D found his way back to the imprisoned Chinatown. He allowed himself to be distracted by guilt over having abandoned his flock for so long. In his absence, one of the young women had been gang raped by soldiers. Unable to bear her disgrace or allow the possibility of such a thing happening a second time, she had hung herself. Her family and neighbors were grief-stricken, but it was a crime that happened frequently, and there was nothing they could do to retaliate. 

D was incensed. His body starved for violence and his mind desperate for a situation that was not beyond his control, he eagerly seized the opportunity for vengeance. For the next two days, he was very busy, tracking down those responsible and dispatching them as painfully as possible, without being discovered. Getting rid of the corpses took the most time. D wished he had brought some of the pets along with him, saddened by the waste of food.

On the eve of the second day, in the midst of a celebration as elaborate as the community's meager means could provide, D could no longer keep his thoughts away from Hikaru. It would have been convenient for both of them, if they had been capable of forgetting their feelings for one another and moving on. For D that would never happen. There had to be another way. No matter what happened, D refused to leave with that exchange remaining their last memory together. Telling his friends to begin preparations for departure on the following night, he set out to leave a message for his beloved. 

Hikaru had not slept since the night of the bombing of Hiroshima. He dragged himself through long hours of work at the naval hospital, collapsing over his desk at night because he couldn't stand the thought of going home to an empty house. 

Most of Hiroshima's medical community had died in the blast, and, had his heart been lighter and his mind free of the guilt and remorse which now consumed him, he would have been on the road east right away. But he knew D was still in Nagasaki somewhere. He could feel him. 

Oh, why hadn't he left? Things would be so much easier if he weren't still somewhere within reach. If he'd left, Hikaru could have convinced himself that the kami had just been playing a game with him all that time, stopping to amuse himself for a brief moment in the course of his endless existence, as such beings were said to do from time to time. But Hikaru could not forget the look on D's face that night or his last words, _I can not live without you_, which played over and over in his mind. Worse, he could not forget the sweet sound of his laughter, the spicy scent of incense in his hair, the velvet touch of his skin, or the trusting warmth of unquestionable love in his mismatched eyes.

On the second night at the hospital, Hikaru remembered the bonsai garden standing, shocked, in pots scattered around his living room floor. Distracted with worry for them, he rushed home. In the middle of the night, he lay on his back, staring at the rafters above, waiting for some answer to come to him. 

Could he really go back to America? If he did, would he be able to live with himself? His grandmother drifted into his mind's eye. "I just want you to be happy," had been her dying words to him. _Obaachan_. Hikaru curled his body into a tight ball and told himself he had already done enough crying to last a lifetime. 

In the depths of his grief and depression, he felt a familiar presence stir close by. When his body did not respond immediately, he realised he had fallen asleep. Outside in the garden, all was quiet. He held his breath and crept to the front door. 

On the front porch, D had to struggle to stop himself from going inside. He paused, listening to the soothing music of Hikaru's breathing. He could have screamed, it hurt so much to be this close and not go to him. D left his message at the door and disappeared back into the darkness, knowing it would only be more difficult to leave, the longer he delayed. 

Moments later, on the other side of the door, Hikaru felt D's presence dwindle. He bit his lip until it bled, forcing himself to stay inside and not call after his visitor. His fingers punched through the strong paper covering the door. _It's better this way_, he insisted. Finally, Hikaru bent to retrieve the parchment that had been shoved through the crack in the shouji. It was a Chinese calligraphy painting of plum blossoms and the full moon. On the back, written in the most beautiful hand Hikaru had ever seen, was a Japanese poem. Squinting in the dark to make out the words, he no longer needed to read, after he discerned the first line.

Where the plovers cry  
On the lip of Saho River  
The shallows are broad—  
I shall lay a plank bridge for you,  
For I am sure that you will come.

A first, superficial reading of Lady Outomo's words deceived the reader into thinking that she knew the lover for whom the poem was intended would come to her at the appointed place. But it was an ariake, a "morning after" poem, written to acknowledge the fleeting intimacy of the night before and beg another audience with the dreamlike visitor who had disappeared with the dawn. This longing was most often one-sided and, knowing this, the author of such poetry would write more for the sake of cherishing a subjective memory of the lover than in actual hope of seeing him again. Lady Outomo had known that the shallows separating her from her lover were deceitfully so, and that the bridge she must lay might have to span time as well as the distance between a yearning heart and a forgetful one in order for the rendezvous to take place. 

The doctor's hands began to tremble, the rattling paper sounding like autumn leaves. There was no doubt that the kami's feelings were as strong and plagued by doubt as his own. No matter how different they might appear, inside, they were as one.

The following morning, after the 7AM air raid alarm had passed without major incident, the busy port city of Nagasaki, terrified past the point of being scared any longer, continued about its daily business. D waited for Hikaru on the Megane-bashi, contenting himself with watching the ducks play and enjoying the cool breeze that blew up from the river, as the hours and people passed by. It was getting on toward lunch time, when the longed-for figure could be seen approaching in the distance. D watched him come, trying to memorise every last detail, burning the image of his beloved into his mind's eye, where no one could ever take it away from him. The fall of his dark ponytail, where it swayed just below his shoulder blades. The perfect way his wire-rimmed glasses framed his large, intense eyes. The burnished bronze of his glowing skin. The easy nobility of his broad shoulders. The beckoning fullness of his soft lips. The precise cut of his jaw line and the way it connected to his pointed chin. 

Hikaru stopped in front of him, and D returned to the moment. The doctor had a far-off look in his eye as he extended his arms, offering D the objects he had carried all the way from home. It was the kimono and obi in which D had first entered Dr. Tezuka's house, and one of Hikaru's most charming bonsai children, an orange tree, which meekly offered up its tiny fruit to a very surprised D. 

"I can not accept this," he told the doctor, as Hikaru put the gift into his hands. 

"Of course you can," he replied with a smile that did not reach his eyes. 

"Then…" D did not want to ask. "You have made your decision."

"Tenshi no Oujisama," Hikaru reached out and placed a hand on D's cheek. D closed his eyes and covered the doctor's hand with his own. "That decision was made long before we met." He twisted his wrist, capturing D's hand and taking it with him, as he moved to look out over the rail of the bridge. 

D huddled against him, absorbing his presence, storing everything he was experiencing, inside and out, away for safekeeping. Hikaru gazed toward the ocean and continued, "If things were different, if we lived in a different world, a different time…if I was like you… But things are as they are, and no amount of 'what if's is going to change that."

Anger welled up inside D. He couldn't let it end this way. It didn't matter that what Hikaru was saying made sense. Nothing mattered, when it came to the feelings that had sprung up inside him in the short time since they'd met. D felt as if he'd just come fully alive, and he was not ready to return to the semi-death he had been living up until now. If he lost Hikaru, he would lose the best part of himself, as well, this startling new beauty that shone within his breast. 

But what could he do? The only option left was to take the doctor by force. D had no doubt that he could do it, but how would Hikaru feel, taken against his will? The idea of enduring years of hatred from an unwilling companion brought back the doctor's hurtful words about being kept as D's pet. D did not want that. That was not as it should be. But he had to do something. 

Eyes of gold and violet locked onto Hikaru's own deep brown and, to the human, seemed to glow several shades brighter. His heart beat, deafening, in his ears, and, though he saw D's lips moving, the kami's words emerged inside his head. "Sleep." Hikaru's eyelids began to drift closed of their own accord. "You will discard all conscious thought and follow me."

It looked to be working. D stepped back from the rail and Hikaru followed. He began to walk toward the harbour, but the hand D was leading pulled him back. Hikaru's unclouded eyes met his, sadly. "Akuma-hime," he moved forward and carefully wrapped his arms around the shorter man and the burden he was holding. "I love you." D laid his head on Hikaru's shoulder, his eyes burning with unshed tears. Strong fingers grabbed his chin and tilted his face up for a kiss as deep and gentle as on that first night. In the midst of it, D opened his eyes, remembering that they were on a crowded street in daylight this time. But the passers-by close enough to notice were all distracted, looking up at the sky. 

Falling abruptly out of their isolating bubble of intimacy, Hikaru and D rejoined the world around them, hearing the roar of an engine high above. As one, their heads snapped up to see the B-29 flying overhead. "I don't understand," a woman's voice came from nearby. "The air raid was this morning. What is a lone plane doing here now?"

"Must be observation," someone else answered. 

With his keen, inhuman sight, D watched, as a shiny cylindrical object fell out of the belly of the bomber. The doctor's beloved plant crashed to the street between them, as D saw that the object was larger than it should have been. 

Hikaru gripped D's shoulders painfully hard, as a moment of clairvoyance blinked across his mind's eye, showing him what was about to become of his city. The vision turned his body to stone. "My God." 

D threw every ounce of energy he had at the descending, man-made Armageddon, trying to fling it into the water. But he was no match for Fate, which, in order to prove the point, blew the bomb even further inland than its original trajectory. D grabbed Hikaru and flew for shelter. The explosion hit, just as they reached the eaves of Sofukuji Temple, the blast flinging them inside, along with large chunks of the stone and mortar which comprised their would-be shelter.

For several seconds, all D could see was a silvery-purple flash that had been burned into his retinae. Blind, all he knew was that the world around him was on fire, and what was left of his clothes hung in tattered rags at his wrists and shoulders. He reached for Hikaru, feeling the doctor's familiar presence nearby. 

Rasping breaths and slight movement confirmed that the human was still alive. With his vision returning slowly, D sat up, noticing that bone was protruding from the tips of his fingers, as he pushed himself up. He turned to Hikaru and cried out. The flesh of the doctor's handsome face had melted, his skin hanging in baggy sheets from his skull. His clothes and hair had been burned away and the glasses molded into his forehead. 

Hikaru opened blind eyes and reached for D. Immortal bent to cradle mortal in his lap. The revulsion D felt, touching the charred, misshapen body of the man he loved, choked him with grief. 

"Tenshi…" Hikaru rasped, the sound of air in his scorched lungs painful. "…or akuma, it doesn't …matter." D tried to quiet him, telling him he should not force himself to speak. Hikaru didn't seem to hear. "Either…way…I—love--you." His strength failed, and he collapsed back into D's arms. Hikaru's faltering breaths were accompanied by the symphony of a growing fire around them and a rain of soil outside, falling back to its native ground after having been sucked up in the explosion. 

D stared at Hikaru, unblinking, holding onto him desperately, willing him to keep breathing. He tried to picture the man in his arms as he'd been minutes before, and not the skeletal shell that lay before him. Hikaru looked back up at D and smiled, his ruined face aglow with a brilliant inner light, which had been obscured by his outer beauty until this moment. It was the essence of Hikaru now that D's eyes beheld, an ethereal starshine the likes of which he knew he would never see again. With his last breath, Hikaru pushed his failing voice to recite his jisei. 

"Weep not insects

Lovers, stars themselves…"

His breath and life left him, before he could finish. 

"Must part," D whispered, finishing the haiku as he closed the human's eyes for the last time. It was Issa. Hikaru's favourite poem. D laughed. How like him it was to choose someone else's work for his death poem. 

Kneeling among the glass-like shards of his shattered heart, D stayed where he was, alternately laughing and crying, as he cradled the body of his lover. When the rain started late that afternoon, it was not enough to put out the flames that had engulfed the temple. The fires burned through the night, their scattered lights providing a warm welcome to the American air forces, as they flew to drop numerous, less destructive bombs on what remained of Nagasaki, just for good measure. The following morning, only ash remained in Sofukuji temple to welcome the reddish-brown dawn. 

Not quite a week later, Japan officially surrendered to the Allies. First decimated, then occupied, life continued to go on. The monks in Nagasaki's temple district struggled to return to their work, along with everyone else. But none dared approach what remained of Sofukuji. 

The mysterious plant growth which had infiltrated every inch of the ruins was unlike anything that had been seen in the area before. It grew at an unbelievable rate, and the dark green vines seemed alive with malevolent energy. The lush pink blossoms would follow one like eyes, as the foliage moved to intercept any brave enough to attempt entering the temple. At night, it was said that the unearthly screams of demons and lost souls could be heard issuing from the depths of the ruins. 

At their wits' end, the Buddhists were forced to look outside their sect for help. A prominent Shinto priest judged Sofukuji sacred space, sending word to the 12th head of Sumeragi, who was en route from Tokyo to perform an exorcism, that she would not be needed. He declared that no one was to disturb the ruins, which were promptly roped off with shimenawa. 

It was late one autumn night, not long after, when a lone, cloaked and cowled figure materialised out of the darkness on the opposite side of the sacred ropes. He extended long, pefectly manicured hands to the jungle-like growth covering the temple, and the vines reluctantly unfurled before him in order to yield up their precious burden. 

Count D cradled the mewling infant in his arms and sighed, disappointed. "Foolish child, what human stupidity has served to distract you from your duty this time?" 

The baby's screams grew louder, in objection, and the cold elder did not move to quiet him. The infant squealed and writhed, doing his best to escape the strong adult hands which had so rudely plucked him from his botanical womb. 

"And ruined a perfectly good body, in the process. You bring me shame." 

Grandfather had taken D back to China, to raise him in the untouched countryside of his homeland, in an attempt to bring his grandson back to himself, and instill proper values. As Fate would have it, a fire in a nearby village, when D was still a child, served to undermine all of his grandfather's hard work in one brief moment. 

Little D could not ignore the screams and cries for help, and the whole scene made his heart feel strange. It had reminded him of something he could not quite remember. When Grandfather had told him not to help the pleading women and children, D had obeyed, but he tucked his funny heart feelings deep down inside and wouldn't let them go. They emerged again later as a spark of sympathy for human beings that his grandfather could never stamp out completely, though he tried…

D lurched back to the present and abruptly stopped speaking. His voice was almost gone, after hours of pouring forth memories he had never been able to access in such detail. But he was not the only one who had spoken in all that time. It was another voice that had helped to trigger the memory, naming the year in which it had all ended. Though D had heard it at the time, he had not processed it, having become completely consumed by the memories. It was mad, but D was certain he had heard it. "What did you say?" he asked Leon, not a little disturbed. 

The naked chest pressed against him leapt in a familiar chuckle which did not belong to Leon Orcot. D jumped out of the American's arms and searched his face. "Hisashiburi desu ne," Leon commented, with a heart-wrenching smile. 'It's been a long time'. 

Looking into his eyes, D was shocked beyond words. Leon Orcot's blue irises twinkled with a completely different personality, and yet, the spirit within was the same one D had been diligently looking after all these months. 

He shook his head, disbelieving. "How…?" his question trailed off, unanswerable. 

Leon bridged the space between them and put his arms around D's waist once more. He met the Chinese man's searching gaze, apologetically.

"When I can not endure missing you…

sometimes it happens that my soul goes astray.

Bind the hem of my robe to keep my soul within,

Keep my grief from wandering through the skies."

It was Leon's voice, speaking perfect Japanese, quoting from a thousand-year-old novel he'd never read, that brought home to D just how wrong things had suddenly become. He leaned into Leon's embrace, experiencing the heartbreak of their separation all over again, wishing that moments could stretched into eternities. Whoever the mortal had been in the past, he was Detective Leon Orcot now, and he had been placed in this city and this body at the turn of the century for a reason. Whatever the reason, it was not for D to say. Human beings had to keep moving and changing in order to learn and grow. Not remembering who they had been in past lessons served a specific purpose in promoting their development. No matter how much D longed for the past, this was the present, for both of them. 

He took Leon's hands from around his waist and kissed each of the human's palms in turn. Leon favoured him with Hikaru's content smile, gently stroking D's hair. For both the first and the last time, his voice almost cracking on the words, D whispered to Hikaru and Leon, both the only human being he had ever loved, "Wo ai ni." Taking the human's face in his hands, he pressed his lips to Leon's brow. Everything went black.

Leon felt weird. He was sitting on the couch at the front of the shop, alone. His back was plastered with bandages from a fight he did not remember having with that damned tiger-striped sheep, and he felt like he'd recently finished a triathlon. His muscles hurt so much, he could hardly feel the sting from the scratches on his back, but his body felt better than it had in months. Renewed. Energised. Relieved, even. He couldn't figure it out. His body felt great, but he felt like he was going to kill himself any minute. It was like he'd come close to finishing first in that triathlon, and lost by mere millimeters. But it wasn't a sports feeling. It was the same feeling he'd had when his mom had died. Like he was just realising he was alone for the first time, all over again. 

Thinking about Mom hurt. This feeling was excruciating. Leon's nose started to itch, like he was about to cry. No way was he going to let Mr. cross-dressing, Holier-than-thou see him crying. He could just imagine what D would say—

"Mr. Detective, are you all right?" came the soft voice from behind him. Leon whirled around, tearing the tape loose on a couple of his bandages. The count was standing in the doorway leading to the back of the shop, the light from the hallway behind him casting his slender frame in silhouette. Leon could see a little more than he was comfortable with through the sheer under-robe D was wearing. 

He looked away, blushing. "Jesus, D! Don't you usually have more clothes on during business hours?" D looked down at himself, slowly, as if half asleep. Leon couldn't remember, had he gotten D up in the middle of a nap? Then who had let him into the shop? It was empty. He couldn't even hear any of the pets that were always shrieking and carrying on in the background. That was a first.

"My apologies," the Chinese man answered numbly. "I…must have forgotten…" He turned and disappeared around the corner. Leon took deep, calming breaths, trying to pretend that his body had not reacted to seeing the outline of D's nude form the way it had just now.

"Shit. I can't stay here anymore," he said to himself, leaping up off the couch. Driving his car into a brick wall was preferable to sitting here, getting buried underneath these fucked up feelings he was having. He grabbed his coat and ran out of the shop, taking the stairs four at a time and almost killing himself in his hurry.

D slumped against the wall of the hallway, just around the corner from the parlour. His arms were wrapped tight around his shoulders in an attempt to keep the pain from seeping out. He heard the detective leave and caught his breath. {It is better this way}, he told himself firmly, as his body began to shake uncontrollably. His legs collapsed beneath him and he slid down the wall, inch by inch. At least he would still be able to see him. Even if their relationship couldn't be the same, at least they could be together. Sort of. Until D's work here was done. And then…

An enormous racket on the stairs heralded the return of the pets. The front door banged open. "Tada ima, Sensei. Sorry we're so late!" Matsuri called over the din. D fled down the hall, incapable of talking to anyone right now. 

Out in the parlour, the noisy chatter and bickering stopped abruptly, the pets scenting the air and whispering to one another. Q-chan shrieked and flapped madly for the back of the shop. Whatever was going on, Matsuri decided it couldn't be anything good. She started to ask, "What's going—" 

"No. NO! NNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOO!!" Tet-chan howled, putting his fist through the nearest wall. 

"What is the matter with you?!" Matsuri screamed, moving to take his fist out of the wall carefully, so as not to break any more bones on the way out. 

He ripped his hand from her grasp, roaring, "I'll kill him! I will KILL him!!" The volatile, fleecy-haired bishounen tore back out the door and up the stairs before Matsuri could stop him. She turned to the other pets for some sort of explanation or help, but met only distracted stares and the turned backs of conspiratorial huddles. She sighed and jogged up the stairs, reminding herself that, even if she did not want him back, if she did not find Tet-chan soon, there would be at least one junior high school girl who would not make it home from school with all of the blood in her veins. "Ketsu-chan! Come back!"

D did not emerge from his room for days and, when he did, he did not have the courage to face Leon Orcot for several more weeks. By that time, the consummate actor had buried his feelings and memories deeply enough to resume his role. He explained calmly to the few pets worthy, that his physical intimacy with Leon, though it had had the potential to open a whole new chapter in their relationship, had ended as quickly as it had begun. It had been a painful, unpleasant experience that none of them would ever mention again, ESPECIALLY to 'Mr. Detective'. 

Leon Orcot never spoke Japanese again, but he did start to hear a foreign language in his sleep. It happened very rarely, but after the dream, Leon would lie awake for hours with that weird, joyous, yet empty feeling he'd experienced at the shop that day. Why, he could never guess. The dream consisted only of this: an oddly familiar, yet unidentifiable voice, speaking only one sentence. "Wo ai ni." How did Leon know that meant 'I love you'? He didn't even know what language it was.

Owari (End) 

__________________________________________________

For those interested, definitions of some of the foreign terms as I used them in this story and a listing of the authors and poems I quoted follows:

JAPANESE

tenshi – angel

oujisama – prince

-hime – name ending denoting a princess

akuma – demon/devil 

hentai yarou – perverted bastards

shouji – traditional-style Japanese sliding door

mono-no-aware – Japanese poetic and philosophical concept focusing on the beauty and poignancy of transience, a bit similar to the Buddhist concept of Mindfulness. Literally: "grievous/pitiable things"

yorishiro – a sacred tree or rock thought to house a kami

shimenawa – Shinto sacred ropes, used to denote and sometimes seal and contain sacred space and superhuman entities which reside within it

Tou no Chuujou – character from Shikibu Murasaki's famous poetic novel The Tale of Genji. The best friend and sometimes lover of the hero, Hikaru Genji.

ot-to – Japanese equivalent of 'oops!'

chabudai – low Japanese dining table

bakemono – monster

shinigami – god of death

tatami – woven mats used as carpeting in traditional Japanese rooms, also used to measure and denote the size of a room

CHINESE

mei ren – Literally: "beautiful person"; though it has come to be used specifically in regard to women, traditionally, it was non-gender specific, and, historically, was a term used very often in Chinese male/male love poems to denote, basically, the Chinese equivalent of bishounen.

huoshenxian – immortal/god in human form 

Bon – the Chinese festival for the ancestors and honoured dead, which falls usually somewhere in the month of August, varying each year with the lunar and Chinese calendar.

wu-hsia – the true form of Chinese martial arts, with a captial A for Art. 

POETRY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

****

Haiku:

The new dragonfly 

circles three times before

it settles in our room

****

The firefly departs 

so quickly, so breathlessly,

it leaves its light behind

The old woman

wiped her nose on the blossom

of a moonflower

--song for children, by Kijou

****

Without knowing love 

for one's children, there's no truth 

in cherry blossoms

--Bashou

****

Weep not, insects

lovers, stars themselves,

must part

--Issa

****

Heian Era:

****

"The face seemed quite to shine in the evening dew,

But I was dazzled by the evening light."

--from chapter 4, Evening Faces, of The Tale of Genji, by Shikibu Murasaki

****

"You linger among the shallow pools of light,

While I dwell in the darkness."

--Genji to Rokujo, subtitled translation in the anime version of Shikibu Murasaki's The Tale of Genji

"When I can not endure missing you…

sometimes it happens that my soul goes astray.

Bind the hem of my robe to keep my soul within,

Keep my grief from wandering through the skies."

--Rokujo's spirit possessing the body of Genji's wife, speaking to Genji. Ibid.

****

All too soon, I fear,

Wild sobs will expose my love,

As wind-driven waves,

Crashing onto the beaches,

Lay bare the roots of the pines.

--Anonymous

****

Hidden-in-winter

The spring moors are all aflame—

And he who burns them,

Can he never burn enough,

That he now sets fire to my heart?

--Anonymous

****

Where the plovers cry

On the lip of Saho River

The shallows are broad—

I'll lay a bridge for you,

For I'm sure that you will come.

--Lady Outomo of Sakanoue


End file.
